


Monday

by mrhiddles



Series: These Aren't Dark Times [High School Verse] [7]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Adults, Alternate Universe - Human, Coming of Age, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Murder, POV Thor (Marvel), Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Protective Thor (Marvel), Trans Character, ftm Loki, more tags to be added as it progresses, seven year time skip, transgender loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-06-28 21:27:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15715407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: Thor’s eyes go to Loki’s knuckles, see if they’re red and bruised, the fighter’s knuckles he was so used to seeing so many years ago. It’s always the first thing he tries to see. It always was. Maybe the last seven years have been a dream, and he’s finally woken up.[Final installment of These Aren't Dark Times Verse]





	1. Seven Years

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on each chapter being about 2K, so around or a little over 10K in total when it's done. The final installment is here~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New picspam post up on my Tumblr for this story! https://mrhiddles.tumblr.com/post/177594079349/these-arent-dark-times-high-school-verse-by

“And what about your family?” his date asks, and he grimaces.

She’s pretty with her soft, brown curls falling over her bare shoulders. Large eyes. A strong jaw and a mouth that quirks as she explains the oddities of her job as an up-and-coming Astronomer. When she jokes about finding aliens, he can see the soft pink flesh of the back of her throat.

He’s been seeing her for two weeks, and she’s nice, makes him smile. She’s whip-smart and scathing when she needs to be.

Her name is Jane and Thor thinks he’ll likely kiss her tonight, their second date. She’ll probably blush but kiss back harder. She seems like she’d do that. Maybe she’ll ignore the whiskey on his breath from an hour earlier.

“A mother. And a brother.”

Jane smiles and takes a small sip of her cocktail. It’s rum, and something orange-smelling. “Oh! I bet you got all your looks from Mom, huh? And what does your brother do?”

Yes. The question. Thor often answers the question with _he’s dead_ because it’s easier. Easier as an explanation and a brilliant way to shut up whoever’s asking quickly. Sometimes he thinks it would be easier if Loki really had died.

Maybe he had. Thor doesn’t know.

Love thrives on the dead, really. Especially when it resides in strange places—if they were in the ground, or elsewhere entirely. Love lives on vanished things.

It’s sorrow and guilt and shame and grief and a lingering _something_. It’s something dark and small and balled up to hide in a fist, close to your chest until you need it. Hidden away until you wake up one day feeling the need to experience the rush of the worst thing to ever happen to you all over again. Whether that meant a long run until your knees clicked, or a hard sob into the basin of your bathroom sink that left your arms shaking.

Thor just goes to work.

Jane sips her rum again and her smile turns strained. Her eyes dart between his—and the patch he wears—then out to the room at large.

“He’s away,” is what he answers with. There’s pain in the word he usually uses, and he doesn’t want to spoil the mood of their easy time together. Time spent with Jane has been fun and nice. Yes, nice.

They order steak and she does kiss back harder. Doesn’t seem to notice how he tastes like alcohol despite having none with their dinner.

Thor stares at his ceiling until three in the morning. He thinks about nothing. About how it felt to have lips on his own.

Doesn’t think about pale knees, angry knuckles, wet ink-black hair.

Tries not to think about anything at all.

\--

It’s Monday and Stark’s in a mood when he goes into work that morning. Thor tries to parcel out what his boss is currently snapping at Volstagg when his friend catches his eye. The barest shake of Volstagg’s head, more of a panicked twitch than anything else, has Stark snapping his mouth shut and turning in that funny swaying way of his.

Then Stark’s eyes narrow and he grins, teeth white. Raps his knuckles once on Volstagg’s desk before bracing himself on the man’s shoulder to stand. He rubs his shoulder as Stark heads Thor’s way.

Thor turns into his office on a sigh, knowing Stark will be making a beeline straight for him. He doesn’t bother closing it.

“Hey, pal,” comes Stark’s too-cheery voice. It’s barely eight in the morning and Thor hadn’t gotten to real sleep until six. “Couldn’t help but notice how no one—no, wait, let me count—yeah, _no one_ in the entire office thought it prudent enough to invite me along for drinks last night?”

Thor winces.

“Thought I wouldn’t notice?” Stark frowns. He perches one hip on Thor’s desk, eyeing the oil painting behind his chair. “Is that—”

“Ludwig Dill, yes,” Thor affirms for what he knows is the eighth time he’s told Stark this information. “It was Sunday night.”

Stark pretends to appraise the painting as Thor settles in his chair, flipping through the day’s to-do. Stark leans in his way, practically on his papers and wags a finger at it. “You know, I could swear that’s Germany. And Sunday, Monday, any day doesn’t mean anything at all. You know I’m in the group chat.”

“How astute, Boss,” Thor says. “And maybe our group chat has a group chat, one you’re not in?”

“I’m in that one too. You really think Pepper wants in on all the office mumbo jumbo you guys blather on about every day? She gets that enough from me through text, _please_. I’ve been using her account to lurk for months.” Stark tilts his head back and forth, eyes on the painting. “Why trees though? It’s muddy looking. The forms aren’t solid. Old-fashioned.” Those dark eyes settle lazily on Thor and Stark squints.

Thor leans away as Stark peers down at him, something sad and weary in his face. It’s too close to _understanding_ for Thor to stomach so he shrugs and leaves it at that.

“And you keep playing this little _I don’t know what painting that is_ game every time you feel left out.”

“Cutting,” Stark says dryly, crossing his arms. “You’re learning.”

“ _And_ I’m going to ignore the fact you just admitted to hacking your wife’s account to chat in our secret group.”

“Well, that’s just rude. At least acknowledge my skullduggery!” Stark demands.

Thor’s lips twist up. “I had a date last night, actually.” He scratches at his patch and Stark doesn’t look away. He never has, has never shifted his gaze out of some misplaced sense of embarrassment or respect. In his interview—they all had to interview before being acquired—Stark had even complemented the scar that stretched from his forehead, down over the edge of his cheek.

Stark laughs once. “Yeah, after you went out to drinks. Is that why you’re tired as hell, your eye redder than…than…” He waves his hand, silently asking for help.

“Wow, that’s bad.”

“I’m off my game today, sue me,” Stark pouts, standing. “Maybe it’s because _no one invited me to drinks last night_?”

Thor grimaces. “Honestly, I didn’t even know until Fandral texted me the details. I was only there for a few drinks before heading out to dinner.”

Stark raises a dark brow, waiting.

“Would you please come to drinks with us next time?” Thor sighs in defeat.

Stark smiles, jubilant. “Why, of course I would, Thor.” He stands and leans out the door, raising his voice. “I’d absolutely _love_ to go for drinks this week! Thought you’d never ask!”

Volstagg’s groan is so loud, Thor can hear it from where he sits, and it makes him smile. Across the office, he can see Fandral’s head down in his own office, fingers twiddling one end of his moustache as he works.

Stark clears his throat and lingers in Thor’s doorway. He’s fidgeting with the collar of his shirt and just looking out at the small array of cubicles lined in neat rows. Sif is in a meeting and Natasha is sitting with her legs crossed in her chair, headphones in and watching them. She offers Thor a small smirk when they lock eyes.

“Are you alright, Tony?” Thor asks him.

Stark looks at him after a long beat. He moves to slide into the opposite chair and taps his knee anxiously for a moment before levelling Thor with a cautious quirk of his lips.

“Pepper’s pregnant.” He keeps talking but Thor’s already around the desk and pulling him in for a hug. “Hey, hey alright, cool it. I haven’t told anyone yet. They might think I gave you a raise. Or fired you. God knows you’d love to be rid of me.”

Thor just laughs, startled by himself when he realizes he's tearing up. “We have to celebrate!”

Stark gives him a look. “Duh. Thought we’d close up shop around lunch and head out for a round, on me?”

Thor doesn’t think about how it seems a little early. How it’s early even for _him_. How his skin is itching and he’s hot under his collar and wants nothing more than to run an ice cube over his burning neck at the thought of a cool drink at one in the afternoon. He won’t have to wait until dinner.

“You’re gonna be a dad,” he says.

Stark nods, oblivious to Thor’s thoughts. “I’m gonna be a dad.”

\--

At lunch, the bar is nearly empty, save for the frequenters and their small office staff. Their office consists of Thor, Stark, Volstagg, Natasha, Fandral and Sif—who is singularly to blame for Thor being here at all.

Shortly after high school, in the after, Thor hadn’t really found a reason to go on to college. He’d stayed home and tinkered around town, doing odd jobs here and there. He’d been at Sif’s graduation ceremony, sitting and clapping in the bleachers. When they went out to dinner after, Sif still in her graduation robes, shoveling lobster into her mouth, she’d pitched him her idea, explaining how she’d been working out the details with Fandral for months. Fandral met them the next day, happy to do something related to the development of Lacrosse without having to coach or play until his back gave out.

Tony Stark had given them a call about three months in, quick to snatch up any promising young enterprise to help along his own business endeavors—in this case robotics-aided heart surgery—something about the fiber of the netting they were developing had potential in muscle grafting. And so here they were, almost seven years down the road and doing well enough Thor has been considering investing in a house plant.

Stark’s news is met with cheers and hugs and shouting, on Volstagg’s end, and Thor patiently sips at his liquor. Every sip begs to be gulped, to be thrown back, for that familiar bitter burn to rush down his throat. But he resists that urge and keeps his gaze firmly fixed on his friends, on his tearful and ecstatic boss, on the other patrons.

Watching Stark turns his stomach. He knows that look of utter love, unyielding devotion for a thing he can’t even see yet. He knows it well enough he feels sick with it then, all at once.

Across the bar a shadow catches his eye, darts out the front door. His friends are happy and laughing. Thor sips on his drink and tries to think about nothing at all.

\--

Stark lets them go home early after the bar. They all hardly drank, but Volstagg still hitches a ride with Fandral and Natasha and Sif is telling Thor to drive with her. He nods and turns when Fandral starts teasing Stark about his car.

“Nice, is that a Ferrari?”

Stark scoffs. “McLaren, you brute.”

They prattle on about nothing, Sif nudges him in the side.

“You doing okay?” She’s looking up at him, concern plain on her face. “Doing better?”

He shrugs, because honestly he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know much these days. Doesn’t feel much these days, and tries not to.

Sif smiles at him, tries to change the subject. Something about a murder she saw on the news last month, and wasn’t that justice, and wouldn’t Loki have loved to see that.

“What?” Thor asks, because he wasn’t paying attention. They’re already driving and he doesn’t know when that happened either. His neck feels hot.

“Laufey was on the news a few weeks back. He’s dead. They found him. They posted the name but nothing else, no pictures. But I mean, how many other people around here do you know with that name?”

“Not many,” Thor tells her, bite in his voice. Anger flashes through him in a rush, remembering all the many monstrosities that Laufey represented. And he thinks, good.

He can’t help but think of the hospital, back then, Loki’s stitched throat inches from his blurry vision.

“Pull over.”

“Thor, what? I can’t—” Sif barks at him, skidding to a stop when Thor grabs for the door. He’s up and out on the street before she’s done talking. “Thor, what the fuck are you doing? You’re going to get hit, you dumbass!”

“I’ll walk. Thanks for the ride, Sif!” he calls through the window with as much normalcy as he can manage. Then he jogs off to the sidewalk, one hand up in apology to the traffic before Sif shouts something at him and drives off.

Thor walks. He walks the five miles it takes to get to the suburbs. And then he walks the extra twenty minutes it takes to get home. If he ran, like he used to be so good at, he’d probably have been home in little over an hour. But now the sky is a dusky shade of orange and he’s thinking about calling in sick to work tomorrow.

His knees ache when he turns up his driveway. Hanging his head, he fingers his patch and yanks it off, itching the scarred skin beneath. It always hurts when he’s stressed. He needs a drink. Maybe he’ll have a whiskey and coke when he gets inside. Watch a movie, sleep on the couch. Sleep through to tomorrow afternoon.

When Thor looks up his knees go weak and he stumbles. He can’t catch his breath.

Loki is leaning on his door, facing him. Watching him with hawk’s eyes, green and amused. His lips are paler than Thor remembers, and there’s bags under his eyes. He looks hollow.

“Thor,” Loki says quietly.

Thor’s eye goes to Loki’s knuckles, see if they’re red and bruised, the fighter’s knuckles he was so used to seeing so many years ago. It’s always the first thing he tries to see. It always _was_. Maybe the last seven years have been a dream, and he’s finally woken up.

But Loki’s hands are in his coat pockets, and the place where Thor’s eye used to be hurts.

Thor forces his legs to move. Forces himself to look away from Loki. Forces himself to put his key in his lock and turn and open the door and leave it open and then, and then—

Loki follows him in.

Loki closes the door behind them.


	2. Lies

Thor takes a deep breath and lets it out through his nose, careful, a way to make the silence stretch. It’s a plea in the dark and he knows it, knows it as well as he knows Loki.

Loki peers into the dark corners of his small living room, down the short hall leading to his bedroom and office, the bathroom he needs to clean. Loki blinks once, twice, and takes a step towards the kitchen, hands still in his pockets. It’s a nice coat. Long, black wool. Looks like designer, and Thor can’t recall Loki ever commenting one way or another on fashion trends.

Loki looks leaner than he used to be. Taller, somehow. More than anything, he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Against his better judgment, he lets his gaze trail slow down the back of him, down two long legs in tight jeans. The back of Loki’s shoes have gold plate on them, just on the heel, and Thor almost snorts.

Maybe he doesn’t know Loki as well as he thinks. Not anymore.

“Why now?” Thor asks him, surprised when his voice sounds steady. Beneath it, hidden, he feels ready to faint.

Loki doesn’t turn to look at him or stop his curious appraisal of Thor’s home. “It was the right time.”

“Want a drink?”

“Do you?” Loki asks instead. Finally, Loki turns, eyes the clock on Thor’s microwave. “It’s only five.”

“So?” He feels sweat start up hot and stifling on the back of his neck. Sif never does this, call him out like this. Not these days, at least. He’s used to wallowing all on his own, no one to watch.

Loki narrows his eyes. “I can smell the liquor on you. When’d you start that?”

Rage flares cruel up the length of his throat, too dry, burning, red, red, _red_. Thor wants to shove him. Wants to kiss him.

“Why now, Loki?” Thor asks again, baring his teeth.

Loki doesn’t answer him right away. He leans back against the counter across from the stove. Thor wants to see his hands. “I told you I’d come back.”

Thor hasn’t moved since the door closed. His blood pumps hot and aching through his fingers, they feel swollen. He bends and flexes them, squeezes them tight in fists, hears the blood rush through his ears instead.

“Seven years ago.” Loki has sense enough to grimace at that, at least. “You heard about Laufey, I’m guessing? That’s why you’re back?”

Loki looks right at him, so focused it makes him feel uneasy. He wants to squirm but wills himself not to, refuses Loki the pleasure of it. He doesn’t look like he’ll answer and Thor huffs. He shakes his head and starts to take a step, towards the hall, the safety of his bedroom. Back to his very own dark corner and the bottle of scotch he has tucked away under his bed frame for especially lonely nights.

Then Loki shifts, an anxious tilt to his shoulders before he roughly shucks off his coat and throws it across the counter. He braces himself back against the marble countertop and Thor revels in the sight of Loki’s bare forearms silhouetted by a black long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up. His knuckles are pale, but clean. No bruises or blood. His right palm looks like there’s a snake coiling around it, a simple black tattoo that makes Thor’s mouth go wet with saliva.

Loki’s left ring finger is circled in gold. He wonders what that means. Who it means. His heart races.

“In a way, yeah.” Loki swallows, the bob of his throat visible. “I thought this would be easier.”

“Nothing’s ever easy with you,” Thor tells him, honest. “I didn’t know if you were dead.”

Loki hangs his head and for the first time Thor notices that his hair is longer. It spills just over his shoulders, makes his collarbones stand out more than he remembers. Maybe Loki is just thinner than he used to be.

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” Loki murmurs. “Thor.”

“Why?” Thor asks, and it comes out wrecked on a half breath.

He steps towards Loki instead and he marvels at how Loki doesn’t fight him away when he touches him. Not when he places two hands on his shoulders, on his neck, to hold his face. Not even when he knows Loki sees the tear he feels slide free from his good eye. Not when he winds too-hard fingers through dark hair and wrenches Loki in a shake, wordlessly begging for an explanation he knows he likely won’t ever get.

“I can’t tell you that right now,” Loki says. He breathes in sharp at another incessant tug against his scalp. Those green eyes are dark as they flit around Thor’s face. “Not yet.”

Something shifts in Loki’s face. Thor thinks Loki wants to kiss him, might very well try. He knows he’ll let it happen if he does. But Thor pulls his hair again, harder than before, and Loki lets out a sound too close to a whimper.

“I told people you were dead,” Thor tells him, letting him go and taking a step back.

Loki is breathing hard. His long fingers work to smooth down the front of his shirt. “Easier, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m still your brother,” Loki says, too abrupt, voice too high. It hits Thor like a question and a demand all at once.

Thor just stares at him. Loki’s breathing hard and fighting to keep it from Thor, but he sees it all the same. He looks down and turns to reach into his fridge, pulls out a box of half-wilted strawberries he bought four days ago. A poor excuse for dinner and to avoid conversation. He’s careful not to touch Loki as he moves past him, turning down the hall to his room. To safety. To peace.

“I’m going to bed.”

He cuts off whatever Loki starts to say by shutting his door.

Thor twists the lock, sets the strawberries on his bed, peels off his jeans and sweater and sits on the far side of his room on the floor, carpet rough under his feet. He glares into the amber liquid of the scotch a foot away from him.

He tips it over with a gentle push of his foot. Pinches the skin of his chest until it bruises. Slaps his own face once with a half open fist, hard enough it aches, and he wants more, wants a lot of things. Wants to bruise and bleed. Wants seven years back. Wants the pain in his head to go away.

But he knows Loki is in his kitchen, or his living room, or right outside his bedroom door and it makes him sick to his stomach thinking about all the many moments in seven years someone can miss. All the memories he’ll never share.

Thor slides onto his back, legs stretching out under his bed, stares up at the popcorn ceiling. It’s flaking, and he needs to repair it. Or move.

He thinks about Stark and Pepper’s new baby.

He thinks about Jane. About how she liked her steak cooked medium-rare. About how strong the line of her neck pulsed when she tilted her head back to laugh.

Thor thinks of the way C. Barton had once assured him, so many years ago, in the chaos of so much pain.

Thinks of how it felt to have narrow hips in his hands, moving on top of him, soft laughter in his ear, love in the breath that fanned across his cheek.

Thor tries to think about nothing at all.

He fails.

\--

Loki is asleep on his couch in the morning. Thor’s been awake for hours, having slept for a rough two before deciding to just start his day. His dreams had been terrible, and he woke feeling off. He wants to go for a run, but he won’t. He just keeps staring at Loki. At his brother. The one who left.

Loki breathes in deep and his hair tufts with each exhale. His legs are too long, barely fitting in the sandwiched position he’s wedged himself in, much like Thor when he can’t bring himself to sleep in his own bed. He really needs to get a longer couch. From where he stands, he can’t tell if Loki looks better rested or not, or if the bags under his eyes are simply bruises.

He glances around and from what he can see, Loki brought nothing with him apart from the clothes on his back. He’s lying fully dressed, with his jacket for a blanket, half on the floor from turning in sleep, he suspects. The tattoo on his palm is more visible and he takes in the scales he hadn’t been close enough to see before.

Thor sees how Loki’s chest is flatter, wonders if he went through with it. Wonders when he decided to start keeping his hair long. Some base urge in him wants to shake Loki awake so he can braid his hair. See how it shines in the morning light. Wants to ask about the ring he wears.

Instead, he drags a soft throw from his bedroom closet and covers Loki. It’ll get cold later, and he doesn’t want Loki to wake up freezing.

He hums and heads to work.

\--

Sif is in his doorway just before lunch. Her arms are crossed, and she looks completely done with him already, which he should have expected.

“Good to see you managed to not become roadkill,” she shoots at him.

“Sorry about that,” he says, biting his lip.

She sits in the adjacent chair and picks at her nails. “Did you see the news I mentioned?”

“Something like that.”

“What does that mean?” Her shoulders tense at the look he gives her.

Thor sighs. “Loki was at my door yesterday when I got back. I got a little sidetracked.”

“Holy shit,” she breathes. She sits forward and Thor watches as she can’t figure out what to do with her hands. She fidgets and her eyes are wide, shining. “How long has he been back? Is it because of Laufey? Is he back for good? Like you said he—”

“I don’t _know_ , Sif. I don’t know him anymore. It’s been seven years. I don’t care—”

She laughs once, brash and clearly disbelieving. “Bullshit. Beautiful, iridescent bullshit, coming from you. Don’t be a dumbass.” Sif points at him. “You’re going to go home and tell your brother you fucking love him, and that he’s not taking his skinny ass anywhere ever again—”

Thor smiles despite the unsteady flip in his chest. “That’s a bit excessive.”

“It’s really not. You forget, I watched you two for years. I know how much he means to you. And vice versa.”

Thor holds Sif’s stare, wondering what exactly she means. How much she knows. He feels his neck heat, and he hates that that’s his tell when he’s nervous. Or angry. Or embarrassed. He hopes she can’t see the edges of his collar.

Sif nods once. “Don’t push him away, Thor.”

“Why now, after all these years? I can’t make any sense of it,” he grunts, wanting to move on.

Sif blinks, her lips thinning as she twists her mouth. “I have my theories. Talk to him.”

“You don’t know how hard that is.” For me, he thinks. He thinks of the scotch under his bed. The whiskey in his cabinets. The weekly order he needs to make this Friday.

“Want me to come back with you?” she asks softly. “Clear out your hidey holes.” She swallows. “Like old times?” she adds gently.

“I didn’t drink last night. I could have. The bottle was right in front of me. But I didn’t.”

Sif nods, pleased. “Thor—”

He wants to bruise. “Sif. I already did my time. I don’t need to go back.”

“Thor, sometimes thirty days isn’t enough. Just ask my mom,” she tells him. “I don’t mind that you still drink, I really don’t. But everything in—”

“Moderation, yes. I did the time, Sif.”

She sighs. He closes his eye at that and flattens his palms out on his desk.

“It’s hard, Sif. It’s hard looking at him. Seeing him again after so long.”

She leans forward and reaches to grab one of his hands in hers, and squeezes.

“It’ll probably be really fucking hard for a good while, but think of it this way—he didn’t lie to you.”

Thor shakes his head. “What?”

Sif squeezes his fingers so hard they hurt and for the first time he realizes her eyes are shining because she’s trying not to cry. She’s as heartbroken as he is.

Thor thinks of the time he caught her sobbing in Loki’s room shortly after he’d left. She’d come over almost every day and stayed through that next summer because Thor was so…so.

Sif had been sitting on his brother’s floor, looking at a journal he knew was Loki’s, at some point. She just held it for a long time, crying. It had made him uncomfortable to witness such a private thing, so he’d left, made lunch like he said he would that day. They’d watched a horror movie and never talked about it.

“He came back. He told you he would, and he did.”

Thor shakes his head slow, ignoring the heavy weight of the truth of it. “Where do I even start with all this?”

Sif sniffs and wipes roughly at her eyes, carefully avoiding her eyeliner. She smiles something shaky and asks him, “Where did you two start in the first place? Go back to the baseline.”

It doesn’t take him long to realize what that is.

Thor smiles and Sif grins back.


	3. Halves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:  
> Graphic, possibly disturbing language, descriptions of violence. If you haven't read the other parts in this series, this won't make sense. (Also small disclaimer: This story is about Loki. Loki as a character from a culmination of things but mostly my own characterization of him from over the years. He and Thor are both morally grey here in a way I don't usually write them, so I understand if that is off-putting to some readers. I'm also using it as a way to practice pushing conflict and dialogue because I feel out of practice with both?? And I am trying to psych myself up to start my first original novel. My next thorki fic I am considering revisiting my Royals series in a post time skip setting on Jotunheim!) But anyway, I'd love to know what you think!!

When Thor gets back from work that night, Loki’s on the front stoop of his house, the door propped open by a dark camo print duffel.

“It was stuffy,” Loki tells him, raising his hand up to take a drag on the cigarette swaying from his fingers. The ash flicks off thick at the end. Thor notices he’s wearing the same gold plate shoes and snorts at the sight of them.

“You dress like a mob boss.”

Smoke curls gently out of Loki’s mouth, sucks it back through his prim nose. He smiles something wolfish. “You never asked me what I do.”

“You work for the mob?” Thor guesses. His keys jangle in his loose grip.

“Assassin actually,” he tells him, matter of fact, when Thor comes to a stop in front of him. “Freelance.”

“Very funny. Get in the truck. We need to talk.”

“Is it _the_ talk?” Loki asks, stubbing his cigarette out on the step and rising to his feet, bag slung quick over one shoulder.

Thor locks his door and ignores the logo on the bag. Army. Loki in the army? When did _that_ happen?

“Yeah. Overdue in my opinion.”

Thor looks back over his shoulder. The gold ring slides easily round and round on Loki’s finger as he twiddles it nervously. Or smugly. Loki’s face gives nothing away and Thor can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s different than when they were kids and he could tell by the smallest twitch in Loki’s mouth what was going on in that head of his.

He walks to his truck and climbs in, probably shuts the door too hard. His key’s jammed in the ignition and the car is chugging before Loki even gets his bag on the floor. He climbs in and dangles one arm free out the side like a child, careless. Thor swallows hard and starts backing out, shifting loudly in the silence dragging between them.

“You still use stick?”

“Works just fine,” Thor huffs.

Loki hums and wait until they’re in the town proper before asking. “Where are we having this talk?”

Thor ignores him. He wants a drink, but he remembers Sif’s angry face in his head. The way she slapped him awake to keep from passing out in his own vomit, that night before heading away. Out. Gone.

He glances at Loki’s bag and thinks, _we both did our time._

Maybe it’s not even Loki’s bag.

God, how he hopes it isn’t.

\--

It’s not until they’re on a familiar stretch of highway that Thor sees Loki tense out of the corner of his eye. His knees draw up and he sits forward in his seat a bit, hand a fist where it sits, reflected in the mirror.

“Have an idea?” Thor offers, knowing it’s cruel.

Loki looks at him and Thor sees a moment of fear flash fast in his eyes. Then he’s back to stoic as ever. He’s gotten very good at that.

“Just one.”

Thor nods and takes the next exit.

\--

Loki lets out a single gasp, a little rush of air when they park and the engine shuts off with a _clug-a-clunk_. Thor grips the steering wheel and stares out at the yellow grass some ten feet away from them and the curb he’s pulled up to. Loki’s balled fists are in his lap.

“This is sick, for you,” Loki whispers.

Thor leans back in his seat, an elbow on the sill of his window.

Loki’s eyes are wide, and he’s not blinking. Just staring out forever at the grass, yellow, endless, forever, rotting grass. Kites dip and dash into the swaying stocks, plucking the deadest and carrying them away to nests, running from winter. They’re late for the season.

“I caught you dealing coke in this park.”

Loki scoffs at that. “I was buying, not dealing.”

“You still had powder up your nose for the better part of those first few months,” Thor tells him. “What difference does it make?”

“I was almost raped here,” Loki spits out, more quiet than he’s heard anyone in a long time. He’s never heard Loki say the word. “You almost died here. Why the hell are we in this shit hole?”

Thor turns, and Loki mirrors him. They stare and stare and stare and Thor’s throat burns. “Because I haven’t been here since then. I needed to.”

“And you thought I’d want to just take a jot out here with you?”

“We both need to.”

Loki jerks his knee up and hits the undercarriage of the dashboard, groaning in a mix of pain and frustration.

“This is _sick_.”

“Why did you come back?”

Loki doesn’t hesitate. “I wanted to.”

“That’s a lie.”

Loki glares at him, eyes a strange reflection of green in the low light. Like spilled soap in water. “I missed you.”

“Lie,” Thor repeats even though it hurts a part of him.

“Only partly,” Loki mutters.

“Loki.” _Please_.

“I killed Brant here,” he breathes. “I killed him.”

Thor nods and it twists sick inside him to see Loki strain to speak. “You know…God, never mind. Let’s go back. I’ve had enough of this fucking place.”

“Loki.”

His glare turns cold, narrow and hollow all at once.

Then he’s shoving open the door and walking into the park, through the grass. Thor rushes to catch up to him, his heart in his stomach, his throat, his arms, everywhere, racing all over.

The path is much the same as he remembers. New leaves cover the ground, the first fallen to the cold weather. Loki treks past a familiar tree and doesn’t spare a look toward it. Doesn’t even slow down, or look back, pretends it’s not even there. Thor only reaches him when he’s stopped in the small clearing. The clearing where he’d been held down with flies dancing over his struggling limbs. The clearing shelved by the lake a ways off, deep liquid black and frosty at the edges.

Loki draws his finger through the space around him, painting first a low line and then a high arc through the crisp air. “This is where I was dragged and held down. This is how far his blood flew when I—” He cuts himself off and shakes his head.

“It felt good, you know.” Thor nods, unsurprised. “I thought there was something wrong with me. But I know now I’ve been like that for a long time.”

That surprises Thor even less, but he still needs to hear it from his brother’s mouth.

“You know they never talk about how you can still feel things after? Like sex. After sex you can still feel it inside you. For a day or two, just this ghost of something shoved in you where there wasn’t anything before, and you think, is this what love is supposed to be like?”

Thor wipes his eye with his thumb, doesn’t look away.

“I can still feel his blood pulsing into my mouth. My hands still remember the moment I pushed that tool into his skull, the little cracks around it. This crunch of pressure before it gave way to everything else.”

Thor breathes slow and deep. Loki shrugs.

“Why does no one ever talk about that?”

\--

When they get back to his house, Thor takes Loki’s bag for him. Just so he knows he’s still welcome inside. Just in case he wants to run.

Thor decides as he’s unlocking the door that he’ll put it in his room. Let Loki have the bed tonight. His thoughts slip to dinner and he knows he probably needs to go shopping for food.

Loki is lingering at the kitchen counter. When Thor turns he realizes Loki has been staring at him. Loki’s expressionless once again, but Thor can see how tired he is. He’s able to tell what Loki’s feeling more than he could earlier.

He digs in his pocket and brings out something small and white and Thor doesn’t know what it means.

“What is that?”

“You know what it is.”

“Well yeah, I know what it is, but _what_ is it?” Thor asks again, standing on the other side.

Loki shrugs again and leans on the counter with his elbows, propping his jaw up with a palm.

“You beat Brant bloody that day in gym. For me.”

Thor swallows down bile. “I remember.”

“You knocked some teeth loose. I kept one.”

Thor stares down at the small thing. A molar. It glints in the light and he nudges it an inch to the side with a knuckle.

“That day, in the park,” he starts, and Loki doesn’t go tense this time. He seems drained. “I knew I’d never loved someone so much. Not like you.”

“Loved,” Loki echoes, voice empty.

Thor frowns. “Love.” Loki blinks and he looks away from his brother. He doesn’t know how to explain what he feels just then. “I needed to go back to remember how hard I fell in love with you. To remember what I’ve spent seven years trying to forget.”

“It didn’t work,” Loki asks, voice careful. As if held between pallet and tongue.

Instead of answering, Thor says, “There’s nothing more wrong with you than anyone else. You’ve hurt people who deserved it. I would’ve done the same if I’d been able. If you’d let me.”

“Person. Not people,” Loki corrects him quickly.

Thor shakes his head and looks back up to meet Loki’s eyes. He’s studying Thor in a way he hasn’t since he’s been back.

“I read Laufey was burned,” Thor says easily. He’d read it on his phone that afternoon before heading home from work. Loki doesn’t look away from him. “He should’ve been quartered.”

Loki looks down at that, curls his knuckles tightly against the counter.

“Take the room tonight. Sif wants to see you tomorrow.” Then, “Takeout for dinner?”

Loki wipes at his eyes and nods, not looking back up.


	4. Fibers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New picspam post up on my Tumblr for this story! https://mrhiddles.tumblr.com/post/177594079349/these-arent-dark-times-high-school-verse-by

Loki disappears into the bathroom for an hour while Thor cleans up from dinner. He can’t hear the water running, and he’s not sure if Loki’s sick from the Chinese takeout they had. The noodles had been a little weird this time.

He can’t hear anything. He spies Loki’s jacket on the back of the couch, discarded hours earlier. Thor stares at it, picks out the individual fibers in the material. After ten minutes he gives in.

Thor runs his hands over the material, grabs it up. Tells himself he’ll just put it on the kitchen counter, folding it so it doesn’t crease. Loki probably doesn’t want his nice, possibly designer coat to crease, obviously. But he keeps holding it. He still can’t hear anything from where Loki is most likely hiding in his bathroom.

Thor brings the material up to his face, buries his nose in it. He can smell him. That same clean, minty copper smell Loki always had about him. He used to wonder if the copper was from blood, all the fighting he used to do, but he’s not so sure now.

He buries his face in the soft material and inhales deep. Fills his lungs with it. Wants to be smothered by it. He’s missed Loki’s scent too much. Has almost forgotten what it was like. Memory serves no justice to things as good as what he has in his hands.

That’s how Loki finds him.

A hand comes down gentle on the top of his head and he knows he’s been caught. He looks up, sheepish, and finds Loki staring at him in a sad way. No, not sad. Maybe something worse. He wonders if his brother is angry.

Loki takes the coat away from him and grabs Thor’s hands instead.

“Dance with me.”

“No, Loki.”

Loki’s hands fall away and he nods, a single jerk of his head.

“You take my room tonight. Sleep in a real bed,” Thor tells him, a demand more than a suggestion.

“You think I haven’t had a bed lately?”

Thor gives him a look. “You look like you haven’t slept in a year. Take the bed.”

And so Loki does.

\--

Thor wakes when he feels a dip beside him. It’s Loki, kneeling by the couch, hand pressed into the cushion under his hip. When he sees Thor awake, he lets up, silent. Thor squints at the clock on his stove across the room and sees it’s past one in the morning. Realizes too late he fell asleep fully dressed.

The way Loki says his name then has Thor feeling like he’s in another room, in another bed, banister glinting in the hall and Loki with a backpack on his shoulders, telling Thor to kiss him.

But Loki’s hair is longer. Loki has a tattoo on his wrist. He’s wearing a tank top and Thor can see he hasn’t gone ahead with the surgery after all—and Thor’s so _happy_ at the sight. He’s wearing shorts and his long legs seem impossibly longer. His arms have definition they didn’t used to have. His eyes are darker, deeper in a way that tells Thor his brother has done and seen too many things for someone his age. His lips are still that cherry-bitten red they always were, since the first time he saw blood on Loki’s clothes.

Thor takes all of it in in a moment. Reminds himself with a deep breath that this isn’t that night, seven years ago. It better not be.

“If you tell me you’re leaving again, I’ll kill you,” Thor tells him with a little laugh. It comes out tired and Loki’s nose wrinkles. Green eyes settle easily on his own and he tries to smile.

“It’s not that. I don’t want to. Not if you don’t want me to.”

Thor can tell Loki’s been crying. He’s squinting slightly in the near-total darkness and he leans forward in a way that tells Thor he’s tired.

“I don’t know if I can trust you. Not yet.”

Loki nods, his jaw working. “I know I broke your trust.”

“You did,” Thor says. He sits up fully. “I need to know why you left.”

Loki looks at the floor, head lowered. “I told you I can’t say yet.”

“Why not?” Thor pleads, voice wavering. His eye socket itches, dry and aching and he wants to pinch the skin there. “I’ve waited almost a decade for the reason. You don’t think we’re ready to move past this?”

“I will. Soon. Very soon. Just let me figure out the words,” Loki forces out, too harsh in the quiet. “You want to move past it?”

Thor sighs, can’t answer. Instead he reaches a hand out to trail tired fingers down Loki’s forearm. He doesn’t flinch away like Thor expects him to.

“You couldn’t sleep?” he asks.

Loki shrugs. “It’s strange without you there, honestly. Has been for a long time.”

Thor bites his tongue, refusing himself the pleasure of saying something stupid, something irreversible.

“Come to bed then,” Thor says instead.

Loki’s head snaps back up, eyes wide.

“You don’t think we’re a little old for that?” Loki tries, but the words come out empty in a way that twists Thor’s stomach.

“I haven’t seen you for seven years, Loki. What do you think?”

So when Loki stands, Thor follows him. He pulls off his jeans and shirt, leaves his underwear on. He doesn’t look at Loki because while it’s not exactly awkward, he just doesn’t know what it’s like between them anymore. Doesn’t want to see rejection in Loki’s eyes.

But Loki is just _there_ when he lies down, almost too close. He hovers, hands unsure, but he doesn’t look disgusted or confused or angry, just a little out of place. Lost. He slides his wondering gaze from the clothes on the floor to Thor in the bed, and Thor feels a jolt leap through him at it.

Thor holds Loki’s stare for a long moment before Loki starts pushing at the covers. Thor slides to the other side of the bed, cold when he hikes the covers around him. Loki climbs in beside him and stays decidedly put where he is. Thor doesn’t move to touch him, breach the distance.

“We used to do this so often in those last days,” Loki says quietly, sounding far away.

“Used to do a lot more.”

Loki focuses back on him. “Not so much more.”

“Kissing you was everything to me then. You know I’d never push you for more.”

Loki frowns. “I _know_ that. Don’t be stupid.”

“Loki,” Thor says and Loki bites his lip, turns on his back to stare at the ceiling. “I tried but, I never stopped loving you. I tried to forget, but it’s you.” Thor hopes he understands.

Loki doesn’t budge. “I know that too.”

“Do you?”

Loki blinks, his lips working for a too-quick moment. He knows there’s something Loki isn’t saying.

So he changes the subject.

“What’s that ring on your finger about?”

Loki seems to come back to himself. He snorts. “Stole it from a friend. Makes it easier to pass in some places. People leave me alone.”

“What kind of places?” It makes Thor sick to think of his brother alone somewhere he needed to worry about going unseen. Because Thor wasn’t there to watch his back and protect him.

Loki shakes his head. Closes his eyes.

“You don’t have to pass here. You have me.”

It sounds like a promise, and Thor isn’t quite ready for those just yet.

But Loki turns to look at him so Thor just raises his arm. An invitation.

Loki’s eyes shine in the dark. He shifts forward into Thor’s arms and Thor’s chest does a little flutter at the feeling of Loki’s arm going tight around him. He buries his face in Thor’s neck.

When Loki pulls back he reaches up to touch Thor’s face, the aching place where his eye used to be. He sweeps his thumb across the scarred skin and Thor feels marginally better.

“I can tell it still hurts you,” Loki says. “Knew it the second I saw you walking up your driveway.”

Thor smiles, something small and easy, because it _is_ easy now. Even after seven years, it’s as easy as it ever was.

Thor didn’t know it could still be easy.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he tells Loki finally. “I’ve gone too long without my brother in my life.”

The fingers on his face slowly drag down until they’re at the edge of his lips, his chin, his neck, before dropping away. Loki’s breath puffs hot against his skin, coming too fast.

“Only your brother?” Loki whispers.

Thor’s first thought is to kiss him. His second is to not. He hesitates, caught between the two.

“You know what that word means to me,” Thor says instead, choosing to just hold him tighter. Loki settles, relaxing against him. “You know what you are to me.”

Loki’s nose presses light against his chin.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

\--

Thor wakes up to his alarm in the morning, phone buzzing on the night stand. Without thinking he props himself up on his elbow and leans over Loki to turn it off.

Loki is awake, eyes bright and green and peering up at him, amused. Thor settles there, an arm on either side of Loki’s head and maybe it’s because he’s still half-asleep, maybe it’s because he had a dream where things were _good_ —maybe it’s just because Loki is alive and bracketed by the warmth of his own body and safe that has Thor threading his fingers through dark hair.

Loki gasps, a soft sound. He blinks, and his hands trail up Thor’s middle, cold on his skin. Thor shivers and Loki digs his nails into his chest.

“I’ve been watching you while you sleep,” Loki says.

“That’s creepy.”

A laugh bursts free out of Loki and his palms go flat on Thor’s skin, pushing him slightly. Thor grins because he can’t help it. Feels his jaw ache from it because it’s been a long time. A very long time.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

Loki’s breath catches in his throat. Thor waits for him to protest, to shout, to shove him away and run out his door with his army duffel and his stolen ring and all the mystery of the last seven years along with it.

But instead he nods, a little sound lodged somewhere in his throat as he raises his head to chase Thor’s mouth.

Thor kisses Loki and it feels like no time passed at all for a long, bright moment. He’s still warm and soft, his long fingers searching out the same places on his chest and neck they did all those years ago. But then one of Loki’s legs come up around his thigh under the covers and Thor has to shimmy to avoid landing on his other leg. He settles between Loki’s legs and he realizes with a start they’ve never done this. The closest they’d ever been had been that day in the park.

Then he realizes he’s hard. And he knows Loki must feel it, wearing only shorts between them. But Loki doesn’t seem to mind the weight that Thor’s trying very hard to avoid pressing into his hip. He weaves his hands into Thor’s hair and bites his bottom lip and Thor moans from the surprise of it.

“I’m glad you kept your hair long,” Loki murmurs into his mouth and _pulls_. Thor groans and Loki bucks his hips, searching him out.

Thor pulls back and plants a knee between Loki’s wiggling hips to stop him.

“Brother,” Thor warns, the sound coming out raspy.

Loki’s lips part, dropping open, body still. His hands slip out of Thor’s hair, down his shoulders to cradle on his chest. He’s heaving and Thor can see his nipples hard through the thin tank he wears. It hikes up over his stomach and Thor has to stop himself from glancing down twice.

Loki reaches up slowly to grab his hand, pulls it down his body, catching over the dip of his stomach, the cotton band of his shorts, down to his thigh. He reaches down and pulls aside his shorts with one hand and guides Thor’s hand there instead. Thor shuts his eye. Loki presses up against the edges of Thor’s fingers and he can feel Loki wet through his own underwear.

Thor swallows and feels Loki’s hot breath steady against his jaw. He peeks down and Loki is watching him, rapt.

Thor drags his little finger lazy through the hair at the edge of his groin, Loki’s hands flying to his hips. He hooks it under Loki’s underwear and starts to pull it aside, feeling the briefest press of warm, wet skin—

His phone rings.

A held breath escapes him and Loki’s head snaps up, startled. Loki smacks into his nose and he brings his hand up to cup it, groaning. He sees the caller ID.

Thor reaches to decline the call but knows Loki has already seen it.

“Who…” Loki asks, the word fading. The gears turn in Loki’s head.

Then he’s pushing Thor away and sitting up. He’s out of the room before Thor even stands.

He sighs.

He forgot about Jane.

\--

Thor stands outside the bathroom door when he hears the shower running, before he realizes it’s not closed. He cracks it open and sees Loki sitting on the toilet seat, head down, so he opens it all the way.

“I’m so fucking stupid. I thought you’d…” Loki starts, but doesn’t finish. He trails off, sniffs.

“What did you think?” Thor asks, because he wants to hear Loki say it.

Loki runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you’d wait. But why would you have. I never gave you a reason to.”

 _Of course you gave me one_ , he thinks but doesn’t say.

“I’ve been on two dates with her. We kissed once.” Loki sniffs again. “I’m not in love with her.”

Loki just shakes his head, staring into the running water.

“Come here,” Thor says.

Loki doesn’t move so Thor repeats himself.

Thor reaches to turn the shower faucet off, but Loki’s hand shoots out to grab his wrist. He drops it as if it burns.

“Don’t,” Loki says. “I like it. The sound calms me down.”

“You’re gonna run up my bill.”

“Then I’ll pay for it,” Loki hisses out, finally meeting his gaze.

“Come here,” Thor says again, tone firm. He holds a hand out and Loki glowers at it, considering.

When Loki takes his hand, Thor hauls him up and forward. He grabs at his hips, squeezes tight before spinning them around, Loki’s back to the wall. Loki allows it to happen, quiet, waiting.

His hands come up to Thor’s neck again and he breathes out, a shuddery thing.

Thor runs his hands down to the edge of Loki’s shorts, hooks his thumbs in the band low around his hips.

“Every day for seven years, I stopped myself from calling you.”

Thor inches the material down and marvels at the way Loki’s long throat works as he does it. The material slides down his legs before he steps out of them, kicking them away.

“I wondered if I’d made a mistake, leaving you,” Loki says. “I just wanted to stay in your bed, touch you, be with you. Go to college with you.”

Thor’s hands run gentle up Loki’s sides, over his stomach. He stops at the tank and slides his fingers underneath, feeling the warmth of Loki’s smooth skin. His fingers graze a breast before sliding around, settling over his sternum.

Loki’s breathing hard again, every touch setting him off. Thor knows he’s never done this either. He just knows.

“I never went to college.”

“Whatever happened to becoming a weatherman?”

It takes him a second to realize what Loki means. “I was fourteen when I said that.”

Loki shrugs. “Always sounded like you meant it.” Then, “How many others have you been with?”

Thor shakes his head, kisses the corner of Loki’s mouth.

“No one,” he says. Loki slides his mouth beneath his but does not kiss him. “No one else, Loki.”

“That day in your room. Do you remember? When I asked to see you,” Loki breathes, eyes flicking between Thor’s and his empty socket. “Do you?”

Thor nods, his hand working its way across Loki’s clavicle.

“That was the moment,” Loki says. “When I decided it would be you. You’d be my first. For everything. Done in the way I wanted it done.”

Thor inhales sharp, remembering the day like it just happened. The intoxicating rush of Loki trusting him with something so new to either of them. The fact Loki loved him enough to do so.

“And what do you want me to do now?”

Loki swallows and presses gentle hands against Thor’s chest to push him away. Thor feels the weight of the action drop into the pit of his stomach, until he realizes Loki is still watching him.

“Undress me.”

Thor’s hands go to Loki’s shirt, pinching the soft material before drawing it up, over Loki’s rising arms. He lets it drop to the floor and takes in the pale slate of Loki’s skin. His nipples the same color of his lips, freckles dotting his ribs. His fingers flex at his sides as he waits.

Thor hooks his hands in Loki’s underwear then and pulls them down, letting them fall away with the rest. He doesn’t look away from Loki’s face, the way his eyes shine in the low light.

It’s the first time he’s seen Loki naked. Loki always carefully shielded himself when they were growing up, and for a long time Thor didn’t understand why. When he first found Loki’s kit in the bathroom, tucked away under the sink, he didn’t realize at first what it meant. But then things started making more and more sense, and he knew it wasn’t his place to ask for this. It never had been.

“What else do you want?” Thor murmurs.

Loki breathes slowly, almost focusing on the act of it. His cheeks are flushed, the tips of his ears red. He grabs Thor’s hand and lets it rest low on his stomach, fingers grazing the rough hair beneath.

“I want a lot of things,” Loki says, voice shaky.

Thor lets his hand fall lower, fingers dancing over where they had been, in bed.

“We have time, Loki.”

Loki nods, eyes closing.

Thor slides a finger through the wet heat beneath his hand and Loki cries out, shocked. His eyes snap open, locked on Thor’s and he does it again. He’s soaked, all wet heat and Thor has to focus to keep his touch the gentle, soft stroke that it is. When he slips a finger inside, shallow, Loki’s head drops to his shoulder, hands flying to his arms.

Loki rocks his hips forward in little circles, and Thor flattens his palm, sliding his hand over Loki’s clit. He bucks and shakes and gasps into Thor’s shoulder and he’s hard, tries not to think about how much. He wants to sink into Loki’s heat, melt into it, but he won’t. Not until Loki tells him to.

He tugs on Thor’s elbow and Thor complies. He buries a finger deep inside Loki and he keens, mouthing hot kisses over Thor’s shoulder. He cradles Loki’s neck in his free hand, gripping him tight, not wanting to let him go.

Loki’s mouth drags hot up Thor’s neck, over his beard, finds his mouth and it’s like kissing fire. He bites his lip and pulls back, green eyes hazy, lost to the work of Thor’s fingers inside him. He hitches a thigh up, pressing tight against Thor and Thor’s arm aches with the strain of it. Loki pulls him in, closer, impossibly close and comes with a shout. Thor works him through it, watching him. He doesn’t stop until Loki shakily bats his hand away.

He brings his drenched hand up to his mouth, letting Loki see. Thor sucks two fingers clean and Loki just watches him, lips parted enough he can see him try for words.

“Disgusting creature,” Loki tells him after a moment, voice rough.

Thor smiles. “Now what else?”

Loki laughs a little. He kisses Thor and pulls away.

“Wash my hair.”

In the shower, Loki stands in front of him with his head bent forward, inky hair drenched. When he straightens, Thor realizes Loki is still a little shorter than him. He works soap through Loki’s hair twice, all the while trying to not bring attention to the way his dick jerks in front of him. Loki stands far enough away he shouldn’t notice.

Then he snakes a hand back and grabs him and Thor nearly pulls his hair in surprise.

“I don’t know why you keep trying to hide it from me,” Loki says. He turns and gives Thor a look. He tugs enough that Thor is coaxed forward until he’s pressing against the soft skin of Loki’s stomach. Loki hums and Thor’s dick bobs where it lies. He keeps his hips still.

Loki tilts his head back again until the spray hits him, washing the suds clean, running over his shoulders.

“You don’t want me to?” Thor asks him when he tilts his head back up, ringing the water from his hair.

Loki snorts and pulls his ear. “I told you before. Don’t be stupid. It’s a penis. Your penis. Nothing sinister about it."

Thor licks his lips, palms at Loki’s sides. Feels Loki’s hips shift as he steps out of the spray of hot water.

“Your turn,” Loki says, grabbing the shampoo.

\--

When they pull into Thor’s work that morning, Loki looks like he’s buzzing. Knees swaying idly, hands taut on the handle to the door. As soon as the engine cuts, Loki is swinging the door open.

Thor had lent him a shirt and tie. Loki had tucked the shirt into his jeans and rolled the sleeves up. His hair hangs loose at his shoulders, the wind blowing it this way and that. Thor thinks he looks beautiful, thinks he’s a lot of things. He switches his gaze to the ground before he hears the jingle of the building’s door opening.

Sif stands there, eyes wide. She steps off the curb and starts forward, her heels clacking against the pavement.

Loki offers a little wave.

And then she punches him, square on the jaw.

“You motherfucker,” she hisses out, teeth clenched. She’s shaking.

Loki stumbles back a few steps but rights himself. “Hello to you too.”

“Tell me you punched him too,” she demands of Thor when she whirls on him.

Thor holds his hands up. “I wanted to.”

She scoffs. “Figured you wouldn’t. You’re useless when it comes to him.”

Loki looks at Thor then, a little too imploring. He turns away.

“Okay less hitting, more meeting. He’ll probably want to meet Tony.”

“Tony?”

\--

“Your boss is Tony Stark? As in _Anthony Stark_?” Loki whispers to Thor when they’re inside.

Loki looks like a kid again, excitement barely withheld when Stark saunters out of his office.

Thor just nods and braces himself for the questions.

Stark gives Loki a once over and asks, “You must be the brother, then. Always wondered what you looked like. Thor doesn’t keep a picture on his desk.”

Loki throws Thor another look but Thor expected this. “Don’t have one. I’ve told you that.”

Loki hums, unpleasant. “We’ll have to fix that, then.”

Stark claps him on the shoulder and Loki looks taken aback. “When Thor called in the other day I thought he was joking. Big guy never takes a sick day.”

Loki makes the same displeased little hum. It digs under Thor’s skin.

“Your work overseas, really great stuff,” Loki tells Stark.

Stark appraises him. “Ah, are you a doctor…?”

“My first tour,” Loki starts and Thor’s mind goes blank. “One of the guys in our squadron would’ve lost a leg if it weren’t for your grafting.”

There’s something off about the way he says it, eyes a little too manic, words a little too sad.

Stark positively beams at the information, oblivious to his tone. “You should be thanking Fandral then. It’s his custom filament structure.”

Loki raises an eyebrow at the name and Thor sighs.

Across the office, Thor sees Fandral’s head bob out from behind his computer screen. Sif waves him over and he stands, looking more awkward than Thor’s ever seen him.

\--

Fandral and Stark manage to draw Loki away. Fandral asks more questions than Loki answers but doesn’t seem to notice, or chooses not to mind. They give him a tour of the office and their ongoing projects while Sif holds Thor back. Natasha even takes out her headphones to say hello and Volstagg is off in a meeting, Thor thinks.

“He’s different,” Sif says, watching as Stark twirls him down the hall.

“I know.”

“He deployed? Where?”

“He hasn’t told me yet,” Thor says, frustrated. “He hasn’t told me anything.”

Sif elbows him. “I thought he was being sarcastic.”

“What?”

Sif leans close. “He had this journal, used to write it in all the time.”

Thor’s heart races. He thinks of the day he caught her sobbing with it in her hands. She doesn’t know he knows about it.

He doesn’t know what Loki wrote inside.

“I held onto it after he left.” She gives him an apologetic look.

“He probably would have wanted you to keep it.”

“I still have it, if you want it,” she says, tone light.

“You were talking about sarcasm?” he asks, bringing the subject back around.

She nods. “Yeah. He mentioned joining up a few times. But he was always so…loud when he wrote. I was never sure if he was serious about what he put down.”

Thor can’t help it. He asks, “What else did he write about?”

Sif doesn’t answer. She just stares up at him, taking in how he fights to keep his expression very carefully blank.

“His family. You.” She pauses and he thinks she’s testing him. “The park. Not much about the trial, or before he left. But enough.”

He doesn’t dare break the careful balance they have. When she finally blinks she sighs, placing a hand on his arm. It feels like reassurance.

“If he really enlisted, you’re lucky he made it back to you, is all,” she finally tells him, matter of fact. “Really lucky.”

“To all of us,” Thor corrects her.

Sif looks at him like he’s wrong.

“Sure.”

\--

When they get back that night, Loki pulls his tie free as soon as they’re inside and goes to lean against the kitchen counter. Thor flips the heater on to chase the chill out of the air.

“I cannot believe you work with Fandral. Sif, that’s obvious. Expected even. But Fandral? You were always beating that kid up.”

“That’s not true. He was just prone to getting in the way during practice,” Thor huffs as he removes his own jacket.

“Ahh, yes. Lacrosse. I used to watch you, before—” Loki says, then cuts himself off. He throws his tie on the counter.

Thor takes the sight of him in. He thinks about how lucky he really is. Loki could have died.

“Sif knows.”

“What does she know?”

“About us,” Thor tells him. “I think.”

Loki doesn’t look put off by the statement. Thor is surprised when Loki starts laughing under his breath.

“What’s so funny?”

“Thor, Sif’s known I’ve wanted you since I was fifteen.”

The confession comes out easy, like it’s the simplest thing. Like Thor always knew too, when he didn’t. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t find the words. He just knows he feels happy. Happy in a way he hasn’t felt since the kid with black nails first gave him a frog.

“Brother,” Thor says, voice low. Loki looks at him, the laughter dying on his tongue. “Tell me what happened to you. After you left home.”

Loki licks his lips, looking suddenly nervous. His hands flit together, fingers twirling his ring. He only snaps out of his daze when Thor places his hands over his, stilling him. He grabs up Loki’s fingers and pinches the ring he wears. Slides it off and sets it on the counter behind them.

“You’re still my home,” Loki says, but it sounds like a question.

“That’ll never change,” Thor insists quietly.

He cups the back of Loki’s neck and kisses him, soft and deep and Loki hums against his mouth.

Loki pulls away and braces himself, tense in Thor’s arms.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll start at the beginning.”


	5. Time

Thor is looking at him as he eats a piece of cheesecake on his eighteenth birthday. He’s trying not to look at him. Thor is often too searching these days and it annoys the hell out of him. He’s fine some days and not fine others, why can’t Thor just let it be? Why must he persist in asking him how he’s doing every five minutes, always touching him, always close at hand if Loki looks anything less than neutral.

He has to remind himself he doesn’t have community service that morning, so he takes smaller bites. Makes it last.

He bites off another forkful of the no-bake slice that Thor made the night before, special, with extra graham-cracker crust like Loki likes, the metal scraping on his teeth. It leaves him shivering and still Thor watches him.

He’d put a big red bow on the plate.

Loki already knows he’s going to leave.

\--

He almost tells Sif. Almost.

She always had a way of figuring him out. Knowing what he was thinking before he said it. It bothers him to no end, but he knows it’s just because she cares about him. She’s protective, like Thor is.

She only gets gum stuck in her hair because she punches a girl who was making fun of Thor’s missing eye, of Loki’s court case that was sweeping through the halls. Rumors and gossip, juicy stuff, he thinks. She tells him about it after a few weeks and he loves her very much in that moment.

So when she looks at him one afternoon, a few days before he knows he’ll leave, he almost tells her.

But he doesn’t.

\--

Loki makes the cheesecake last until the day he leaves. He only finishes it before Thor and Frigga head to bed, because he needs to pack, and he wanted it to last.

Thor eats it with him.

\--

It’s cold out when he shuts the front door to the house he’d come to know so well. The flaking paint on the door, the cracked wood around the window sills, the lightly watered grass that lies in clumps up the small flat driveway edged in colorful stones, Frigga’s car parked there just like every other night. He knows Frigga will be up in five hours, going about her usual routine of making coffee, getting dressed, doing her hair and makeup—just a little bit of powder and mascara because foundation irritates her skin—and off to work she’ll go. She probably won’t even notice Loki is gone until she gets back that night at seven. Or until Thor tells her.

He doesn’t really know what Thor will do.

Loki had expected Thor to hold him where he was, tape him to the wall of his room if he had to to keep him from leaving. At the very least follow him out the door.

But as Loki walks to the curb, he turns back. Takes in the aging home of the few people in the world he knows love him—and it’s silent and dark. Thor doesn’t appear, wild-eyed and furious, heartbroken, confused—nothing. Wind-chilled and restless, he turns back around and heads for the road.

He doesn’t head for the freeway.

Not yet.

\--

His childhood home is the same. Overhang mottled with mold and dead grass. Cracked cement slope for a driveway with no car to boast. Fence to the backyard broken and hanging half off the wall of the house. The mailbox is missing, and he wonders when that happened.

His old bedroom window is dark, like the rest of the house. He takes out the key he’s kept hidden in the back of his wallet and quietly unlocks the door.

It still smells the same sour-rot smell when he steps inside, and he holds his breath. Lets it out when he sees how hard it’s going to be to navigate the filthy cluttered floor. He steps around broken bottles and needle caps—the syringes missing—going for the room he refused to enter once upon a time. There’s clothes everywhere. He smells feces.

Another life.

When Loki finds him he sees his mother first. She’s on the floor of the closet, snoring. She’s naked except for the raggedy underwear hanging off her hips. He turns away and lays eyes on his father for the first time in two years.

He’s sleeping on the bed. His skin is gray and he’s thin. Thinner than he used to be. He has a yellow tube tied around his right arm and his shallow breathing has Loki counting the ribs he can see. He’s drooling.

Loki thinks on what to do. Makes a decision.

He tiptoes around clothes piled in small mountains around the room. Counts the holes in the walls. His heart is pounding, but he’s still calm. Never used to be when looking at Laufey. He wonders when that happened too.

He places a hand hard over his father’s mouth and pinches his nose. Soon enough he twitches awake, eyes confused until they land on Loki. He starts to panic and Loki marvels at how weak his father has become that he can’t dislodge the hands denying him air.

 _Prison must have been hard on you,_ Loki thinks. He feels distant, apart from it all as his father struggles underneath him.

He doesn’t feel anything.

The realization makes him ill. He removes his hands and turns and leaves, walks out the door to the sound of angry coughing, a pathetic stutter. He heaves onto the grass, mostly bile. He thinks it’s the cheesecake too and he’s angry how he doesn’t even get to keep that. The last thing Thor gave him before he left.

 _No_ , he thinks when he’s regained his breath. _No, he kissed me tonight._

Another life.

It’s enough.

\--

Two weeks later, two things happen.

He runs out of money for food.

And he gets caught taking his shot of testosterone by the cleaning lady of the motel he’s bunking at and gets kicked out on the grounds of _He’s shooting up heroine, sir!_

Loki scowls and shouts and throws his kit at the door. She calls the police, but he’s already grabbing up his bag and the complimentary box of tissues as he runs out. Runs all the way to the school field he used to watch Thor play lacrosse in.

He watches for a long while. It’s only a class playing soccer, badly, but he stares at the bleachers where he’d sit with Sif and Thor and—and it’s too much to think about.

He only realizes he forgot his kit when the lunch bell rings.

He leaves, too upset with himself to call his doctor. Frigga would know. He can’t have that.

\--

Loki sleeps on bus stops and showers in public restrooms, splashing water under his arms and down his pants when there’s no one else around to see him. His hair starts to smell, so he steals scissors from a shop and chops it off as evenly as he can manage in the water-stained mirror of a restaurant. Ties his hoodie tight around his ears so no one looks at him weird when he walks back out.

He steals food because he refuses to beg. Refuses to do a lot of things people poke him awake for when he sleeps tucked away in alleys. He stops sleeping in dark corners. Somehow it feels safer to be out on the street, where anyone can see him.

He goes to a free clinic after the second week in the next town over. Uses two dollars to get there. Since he’s eighteen, he manages to transfer his records to the new clinic and gets his hormones again inside of a month. He’s just grateful he never had to consider using pads again. He doesn’t want to think about it.

\--

He’s in the middle of a dream where Thor’s kissing him when someone kicks him awake. He startles, knees jerking close to his chest as he realizes it was a nudge, not a kick. A khaki colored boot hovers in front of him.

He follows the leg up and sees a man and he sits up fast, grabbing his bag tight.

“Kid, what’re you doing out here?” the man asks him. “It’s almost summer sure, but it’s cold as all hell still most nights.”

“I’m not a kid.”

The man huffs at that, a little laugh like he’s amused by it. “Kid or not, cold is cold.”

Loki glares at him and stands. Some feet away he can see another man in matching fatigues staying close, sight trained on something down the street.

The man in front of him smiles, but it tilts sad and Loki doesn’t know what to make of it. He doesn’t look like a threat, but it’s not the first time he’s been woken up by strange men and he’s not about to drop his guard for some well-meaning military quack—

“Maybe I like cold,” Loki mutters.

The man’s blue eyes crinkle as he laughs, head thrown back. It reminds him of Thor for a cruel moment. Maybe that’s why he stays where he is.

“I’m Steve Rogers. Guy over there’s Bucky,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. He’s holding a stack of paper under his other elbow and he sees Loki staring at it. “I’m sure you don’t want one of these. I’m sorry I bothered you. Just didn’t want you freezing out here is all.”

“What is it?” Loki asks, bristling. He waves a hand at the papers and Rogers hands him one, a little sheepish. “Propaganda.”

Rogers shakes his head. “More like help wanted ads.”

Loki scoffs at that and reads down the page. A graphic of a man decked out in full army gear jumping out of a plane over a desert.

It’s ridiculous but it sends a pleasant tingle through Loki. He starts thinking about it.

He thinks about it long enough that the other one, Bucky, comes over.

“This one didn’t bite you, did he?”

“That was _one_ time—” Rogers sighs.

“Is it worth it?” Loki asks. He’s not thinking of anything but how he’s been alone, exhausted, filthy, and hungry for two months. He’s thinking of his endless dreams of Thor. Thor holding him. Thor cooking for him. Thor annoying him. Thor kissing him. “Joining the army, is it worth it?”

The men share a look between them and Loki swallows, waiting.

“You eighteen?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah.” He pulls out his wallet and shows them his ID.

Bucky raises his eyebrows at that. Rogers sighs again.

“It’s not a free pass,” Rogers tells him, clearly a warning. “I didn’t come here to preach to you about joining up. It took me six—”

“Eight,” Bucky corrects him.

“—Times taking the physical to pass. I joined up because it’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Beside him, Bucky smiles, fond, and Loki realizes they must be very close friends. “Buck’s my family. My unit’s my family. It’s hard work and struggle and the greatest thing you’ll ever do. It’s not a bed and meal.”

“There’s prison for that,” Bucky adds.

“If I wanted to go to prison, I’d be there,” Loki tells them. He looks back down at the paper.

Family. He could do with some family.

The way the men look at each other has Loki envious and he wants that. Misses it more than anything. Doesn’t think about how what he’s missing is in the next town over.

He crumples up the paper and throws it at Rogers. He watches it bounce off his chest.

“They should just have you pitch it, not some dumb graphic,” Loki says.

Bucky laughs. “I’m sure I’ve said the same thing a few times.”

Rogers rolls his eyes and picks up the crumpled paper. He throws it into the rusted bin beside the bus stop Loki had been sleeping under.

“Don’t litter.” He looks Loki up and down and Loki fights not to squirm. “Rule number one. There’s a lot of rules you have to follow.”

“I’ve never had any problems following rules,” Loki lies.

Bucky smiles like he can tell, leaning against the metal beam of the stop. He taps the back of his hand against Rogers’ shoulder.

“I like this kid.”

“Why are you out on the street?” Rogers finally asks him.

Loki blinks, knowing he has to answer.

“I had,” he starts, and stops. “I had to be on my own. But it’s hard. And I do need things like a bed and a meal. But I need a family too.”

“What about your own family?” Bucky asks him.

“I can’t be with them right now. I have to…to go my own way for a while. They know it’s not forever.”

Only Thor knows that, but…oh, how he hopes Thor knows that.

“Looking for purpose?” Rogers supplies and Loki nods, accepting the reason he didn’t come up with in the first place. It rings around inside him, _purpose, purpose, purpose_.

But it sounds silly to him. So he just nods, hoping they take it as sincere.

The men turn to each other again and Loki surprises himself when new words tumble out of him, worry evident in spite of himself.

“I’m not really a boy,” he spits out, feeling the words harden on his tongue. “A man.”

They turn back to him slow. Rogers looks him over again, something steely settling over his face.

“None of that now, kid,” he says and Loki feels the air leave him. “I won’t tolerate lying. I know a man when I see one.”

“He does already have the haircut,” Bucky says, lips tilting up.

“He’s a little scrawny though,” Rogers adds, smirking.

“I got you bulked up. You used to have chicken legs for arms.” Bucky turns to Loki and slaps his arm. “You shoulda seen him. He was ridiculous. This skinny little kid, sick all the time. I got him in the gym for six months, now look at him. He can bench a car.”

Rogers puffs out his cheeks. “Hardly. And I still need my inhaler—”

Loki’s pack slips to the ground and their attention is drawn back to him. He holds his hands up.

“Are you saying I can join? Do what you do?”

Rogers smiles. “We’re saying you can try out, like we did. You seem like a good kid.”

“Prove us wrong,” Bucky says, eyes narrowing deviously. Rogers elbows him.

“Phone ahead, will you?” Rogers asks his friend and Bucky shrugs, heading off with his phone in hand. “We’ll grab some lunch and head back to base. It’s a bus ride away. We actually had a few stops left, but foods more important I think.”

Rogers rattles on about different kinds of food but Loki isn’t listening. He’s going to have somewhere to sleep, where he won’t be cold. Somewhere he can eat regular meals and not be hungry. Somewhere he can be _more_ —

The thought shocks him. How had it taken less than ten minutes to go from laughing at the idea to feeling excited about it? He wasn’t the type. Thor was like that—had been like that. Overeager and ready for any new shiny thing the world threw at him. Before the park, at least.

Loki doesn’t like to think about the park, so doesn’t.

He wasn’t the type to be taken in by the cheesy commercials and overused graphics. Wasn’t one to be moved by speeches and riled to causes. He’s always been the loner, the comfortable loner. He doesn’t need anyone else.

But he watches the way Rogers looks over to Bucky as he talks and it reminds him of how he would look at Thor. It unsettles him. But it’s familiar.

He clears his throat and Rogers lets his words fade.

“They let you keep your inhaler?” Loki asks him. Rogers nods. “Would they let me keep taking my hormones?”

It’s a question better suited for Frigga. But he doesn’t have Frigga anymore. And he needs to stop thinking that he does. That he ever will again, not for a long time. Not until he figures out what to do about his—about Laufey.

He left Thor and Frigga and Sif to finish something, and he couldn’t. He needs to kill that weakness inside himself.

Rogers nods. “I get to keep my trusty inhaler don’t I?” he asks, pulling the very thing out of one pocket. “We have health care. If anyone gives you any trouble about it, tell them to talk to me.”

“You’re high ranking?”

Rogers shrugs, looks wistful.

“Something like that.”

\--

MEPS testing is easier than he thought it would be.

Steve, as he insisted on being called soon after meeting, turned out to be something of a living legend within the military. Everyone he passed wanted to shake his hand. Loki’s never met anyone like him.

Loki’s put in with the other male applicants, largely due to Steve and his influence he suspects, and he feels cautiously giddy about it.

He’s given no trouble over his paperwork. He pees in a cup. He gets his testosterone waived. He does a duck walk and glowers the entire time, ignoring the way a man with grey in his hair beside him laughs and falls onto his ass more than once for it.

Loki doesn’t see him again when the group he’s shuffled with is told they passed.

He feels relief for the first time in months.

\--

Steve steps in only when Loki’s past is brought up. They meet in a small office of the lead drill sergeant and Loki has to explain what happened in the park, why he was sentenced to no prison time. He bites the words out, hating them.

He knows it’s only because of Steve pulling his weight that he’s officially allowed in.

\--

Basic is a lot more screaming than he imagined.

They tell him to shake his bag, so he does, and only two things fall out, his wallet and his hormones. He sorts them exactly how he needs to and he lets out a held breath when they pass him to scream, red-veined and hoarse, at the guy next to him.

They’re told to make a phone call home. It’s so loud, there’s so much shouting he can barely hear what anyone is saying. Then suddenly it’s his turn and he doesn’t have anyone to call.

He stands there, frozen in place. His first instinct is to call Thor. But he can’t do that.

One of the drill sergeants finds him and nearly pushes his sweating face against his cheek, screaming so loud his ears ring.

He calls the free clinic instead. Relays a message to the front desk assistant even though she keeps asking, “What?”

\--

Loki was never very good at running to begin with. But training makes him better. He gets better at a lot of things.

He thinks of how Thor could lift weights for what seemed like forever. But he was never very good at pull ups. Loki gets to a hundred after three weeks and he feels like something unlocks within him. He feels good about himself. He starts working out every morning before training. Before long, when he flexes, there’s something to show for it and it makes him proud, no longer the willowy kid with black nails and wiry hair.

When they begin sparring, he doesn’t hold back. He hisses and his spit flies, gathering gross at the back of his mouthguard as he bullies his opponent to the ground. He’s always the first to hit the head, make the other tap out. He thanks all those fights he had in school.

He’s not so bad when they start training with rifles either.

It’s been a month and a half when Loki sees Bucky one afternoon during lunch, talking with one of the drill sergeants. They lean close and whisper and Loki wants to know what they’re saying, because they keep looking at him and it makes him feel anxious.

Bucky catches his eye and crooks a finger toward him, asking him over.

Loki gathers his tray and trashes it, heading over because he’s used to listening now. That took a lot of screaming to change. And a lot of falling onto his ass in the dirt during log hurdles.

“Hey kid,” he says when Loki gets close. “How’ve you been?”

Loki watches the drill sergeant fall back, resuming his pacing around the room.

“Things have been good. Is everything alright?” he asks, worried in a way he hasn’t been since he first asked if he could keep his hormones. Was that changing?

“You look healthy,” Bucky tells him. “They tell me you’re doing well. You’ve got what, four weeks left? Five?”

“Four.”

“What’re you gonna do after that?” Bucky asks, brows raised.

Loki never thought about that. Ten weeks of basic and then…then nothing. He doesn’t know.

“I don’t know. I don’t have control where they deploy me.”

Bucky shrugs. “You have to have a preference though?”

“Not really. They can send me where they need me.”

“Hm. You just want to be infantry then? No other job in mind?”

Loki thinks. He always assumed he’d go straight into combat. It wasn’t like some of the others he trains with, talking about intelligence and aviation, mechanics. He always thought of Thor, thought it was what he would do.

“Huh,” Bucky hums. “Well. Good luck finishing up. You’ll do great. Steve says hi.”

And he walks away.

Loki heads back to his table, grabbing an apple.

He doesn’t know what to think about Bucky.

\--

It’s hard connecting with the others around him. They’re patriotic in a way he’s not. They’re passionate in a way he’s not. They’re in love with the work they will do, while Loki doesn’t know how to feel about the future.

How can you love something that hasn’t happened yet?

He finds he’s become more passionate about himself. What he’s accomplished. The way he doesn’t get so out of breath he throws up after running drills anymore. The way he doesn’t wake up with wet eyes from nightmares he can’t control. The way the rage inside him has narrowed to a simmer, still there but not everywhere, all the time. He finds he can talk better with the people around him, even if he can’t relate.

He never really related to anyone anyway.

\--

Graduation comes. Loki stands as tall as anyone around him, shoulders back and chin high. He knows he’ll remember it for the rest of his life.

Then it comes time for families to visit.

He sits alone and knows he’ll remember that too.

\--

A year later, a kid from Newark has his leg blown half off from shrapnel. Loki always thought he snuck in underage and joined up because it was his dream.

His own face is bleeding, his vision shaky, but he’s otherwise whole. He blinks away blood, swings his rifle over his back and shoves his hands over the pulsing wound when he reaches the kid through the dust in the air.

Their medic is quick about wrapping it. Pulls a neon-blue rope-like netting out, a fine webbing between each knot and shoves it deep into the severed mess of the kid’s limb. It’s new-age stuff out of some company in the states, Stark tech. It adheres to the wound like a second skin, the bleeding stopped. The medic presses the wound together and staples it shut, quick work, field work, it’ll-do work. Newark looks up at him with stars in his eyes and Loki knows he’s fading away.

Newark dies with Loki’s hands on his face, trying to keep him sat upright. He stays crouched there, stunned at how quick the kid went.

He doesn’t die like _he_ did. _He_ died slow, he suffered. Loki made sure he did.

The fiber of the netting is still glowing under the staples, ensuring a saved limb for the kid with eyes that stare into nothing, already dull.

The medic gets a bullet scrape over the top of his helmet for his trouble, so they keep on.

Loki shoves the memory of a cracked skull out of his mind, away, away, gone with the dirt the dust and blood on his hands.

\--

Two years and three tours in, Loki gets a medal.

He throws it away.

\--

Loki feels old. He feels like he’s missing something, something that’s flying past him he can’t see.

He talks to Steve sometimes. Bucky too. It seems like such a long time ago that they found him sleeping under a bus stop, cold and dirty and shaking away dreams from another life.

“Another life,” he whispers to himself.

\--

Bucky comes in on a plane one night. He’s ushered away into the black rooms and doesn’t come out again until morning. He looks deranged when the light hits his face a certain way, but when Loki blinks, it’s gone.

Bucky asks him if he’s interested in another type of field work. Loki doesn’t know what he means. He says his gun and his bag is enough for him. He’s grown used to the desert heat. Used to the camel spiders that crawl up out of the sand, running away from bored soldiers who poke their bayonets deep, laughing.

Bucky asks the same question again, insisting he consider it.

Loki shrugs. It’s his third year in the army. He has another three left.

“We’ll commute your sentence,” Bucky jokes. “Finish your three years out with my team. It’s better pay. Better benefits. Longer hours. More fun.”

It’s the first time Loki’s heard about Bucky having a team. He asks if Steve’s on it. He says no.

Loki pretends to consider it. Then he says yes.

\--

Bucky tells him after they land in London that it’s good he agreed to come with him, because they needed a snake.

Loki feels the word sit heavy inside him, but doesn’t argue.

\--

Bucky proves to be a leader more than he ever knew.

The work requires stealth gear. He feels almost naked with just a knife and pistol to protect himself. He’s told to buy a suit, so he does. He spars with Bucky and the first time Bucky lands on his back, he laughs and says Loki’s ready.

It’s slippery work, intelligence. But he loves it. It’s more his style.

It takes him five years since leaving Thor to realize he has a style.

\--

Sometimes, he’s lonely. Sometimes, he thinks about what Thor is doing. If he’s with someone. If he’s as lonely as Loki feels.

The thought makes him joyful and sick at the same time, so he often banishes the train of thought altogether.

\--

Loki spends six months in Russia. Another two in Holland. Four in Mexico and he’s missed the heat. He steals a ring from a little pawn shop in Tijuana before making his way to Cancún. He tracks a club owner who killed his wife and waits for him to leave his five-star hotel. Loki follows him and notices the food makes him sick despite the ritzy image. He ends up avoiding the beach for a week and it makes Loki’s job easier.

He follows the man all the way back to Juarez. To his compound. It’s extra security, armed, but nothing Loki’s never managed to get through before. He tells the doorman of the club that night he’s looking for girls. Tells the doorman he has money. Flashes the ring and it helps his image of the married man looking for fun away from home.

It goes sour in Juarez. He gets out with his life and not much else. His backup dies days before he leaves the country on foot.

Loki tells Bucky over a pay phone what happened. He can’t help laughing, staring down at the ring on his finger. He feels mad and it’s like he’s a seventeen-year-old in his brother’s lap all over again, his own little perfect, tempestuous slice of lunacy that only makes sense to him.

Bucky listens to all he says. Listens to Loki explain how he completed the mission, but the man sent to cover him was working both sides, and he died for it.

He asks if Loki killed him.

Loki tells him no.

Bucky tells him he’s out.

\--

Steve meets him when it’s been six years. Loki’s been working the quieter side of intelligence for the last two months when Steve finds him in Arizona. It’s more talking than sneaking and bribing. He’s good at talking. Excellent at it.

He doesn’t have to fight his way out of bloody situations every other week either, but his relief at that he keeps to himself.

Steve just walks through security like it’s an everyday thing, though Loki knows it isn’t. He’s learned a lot more about Steve Rogers over the years. Knows why he’s so respected. Knows why he’s listened to. He can’t understand how the man walks like he’s pleased with the very air he breathes all the time, knowing what he’s been through.

They grab coffee.

“How’ve you been?” he asks Loki.

“Bored out of my mind,” Loki answers honestly.

Loki has been bored. But it’s the good kind of bored. It’s not the anxious stakeout kind of bored. Or the please-why-are-you-taking-so-long-to-pass-out kind of bored. It’s the makes-your-knees-jittery-until-you-slump-in-your-squeaky-office-chair-because-this interrogation-isn’t-going-anywhere kind of bored. He hasn’t had to scrub blood from his skin in months. He hasn’t had to wake up and remind himself what country he’s in.

Steve laughs. “Bucky says hi.”

Loki rolls his eyes. He swirls his coffee around with a red stirring stick and watches the cream blend away. “Yeah, well, fuck Bucky Barnes.”

Steve grimaces. “He has his reasons, kid.”

Loki sends him a rotten look at the word. “Why’re you here?”

“Just checking in on some cases. I’ll be out of the country for a while.” He doesn’t look happy about it. “Felt like checking in since it’s been a minute.”

“It has.”

“You got married?” he asks, no emotion in his voice as he glances down at Loki’s hand around his coffee cup.

“No.”

Steve hums. “Your time’s almost up,” he comments.

“Another few weeks and then I can stay or leave,” Loki says.

It’s been six years since he left. It feels strange. Knowing he has people somewhere who likely think of him, scowls on their faces, anger hard in their chests. He wonders again if Thor is alone.

“Have you decided what you’ll do?” Steve asks, bringing Loki back to the present.

“Everyone is always asking me that,” he frowns.

“Will you go home?” Steve asks and it has Loki quiet.

He hasn’t really thought about home in a long time. Hasn’t allowed himself to think about much beyond Thor, his face, what his voice sounds—sounded like. He doesn’t know anymore.

“I don’t know if they’d want me back.”

Steve makes a sound at that. “You told me once you didn’t say it was forever. They’re expecting you.”

“How do you know?”

Steve shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “I know how it is to wait for someone to come back home to you. You don’t give up on family.”

Loki wonders if he’s talking about Bucky. He hasn’t seen the two in the same room together for years.

“You haven’t considered the possibility I’ve given up on them,” Loki says, feeling sly.

Steve just levels him a disbelieving look.

“Whatever you say, kid.” Loki sees the grey in his blond hair. He sighs, then, “But I don’t think you have.”

Loki hums and lets his coffee go cold.

\--

Loki retires after almost another year. It’s coming up on the anniversary of the day he left, and he realizes it’ll be the first time he’ll have nothing planned for the day to keep busy. Realizes a little late he’s retired before he’s thirty, thinks it’s funny how that worked out.

He thinks of the kid that died in the desert. Newark, he remembers. He looks down at his nails and almost expects to see blood lodged beneath each bed, but they’re neat and trimmed like he always keeps them. Clean and spotless and not baring any of the gore he’s witnessed over the years.

He twists his fingers through the air and can almost feel the hilt of a screwdriver cold in his palm. Can almost taste the blood filling his mouth. The scratch of dying grass on his bare legs.

He decides to go home.

He decides to find Laufey.

He buys a plane ticket. In eight hours, he’ll be home.

\--

Loki rents an unassuming car and drives past the old house. He tries not to look at it and fails.

It’s been painted. Flowers have been put in. Frigga’s car isn’t in the driveway. He sees a dog pop up in the window to bark at his passing car and he frowns. Not there anymore, then.

He swallows down the lump of scattered panic that rises and speeds up a little. He knows where he needs to go. And tracking down Thor isn’t on top of his list.

\--

He parks across the street and waits a few minutes to see if anyone passes by the dark windows, the empty driveway. He pulls out his pack of cigarettes and lights one, puffing away with the windows up. Screw the rental.

Loki is down four cigarettes when a car pulls up. A clunker with black rims and tinted windows that scream dealer. Waits patiently as he watches a familiar lean frame lope out of the back seat and up the drive. The man lingers, stumbles back a step, then persists in pushing himself towards his own door. He’s high, like Loki’s seen him so many times before.

When the door shuts behind Laufey, the car pulling away, Loki slopes easily out of his seat and heads for his old house. He puffs away on his cigarette, lungs burning. Holds it between his teeth as he reaches into his pocket and pulls on the leather gloves he keeps there.

He knocks and there’s no answer. He rolls his shoulders, chin turned down. Stares at the knob and waits, like he’s become used to doing. Like he’d been paid to learn, years back.

He hears footsteps on the other side and he looks at his straining forearms. Maybe he really is a snake.

Finally, the knob begins to turn and as soon as he hears the lock click free he shoves his shoulder hard, knocking Laufey back onto the stained carpet. It’s surprisingly clean, floors clear and the smell of rot missing.

Laufey stutters, clearly shocked. He doesn’t move to get up.

Loki spits on the floor beside him and quickly moves through the house. His mother isn’t there. Not where he can find her.

“Where is she?”

“Come to finish the job, then?” his father mutters, voice fluttery.

“Where is she?” Loki asks again, coming to stand over his father once more. “What’d you do with her?”

Laufey’s eyes shine and he braces his hands on either side of his body. “She died. Two years ago.”

The knowledge passes through him, a wave of something he can’t quite place.

“From what?”

“Pneumonia.”

Loki nods, looks around the room again.

“It took her dying for you to give a shit about this place?”

“I got clean too.”

Loki knows it’s a lie. He sucks a long drag off his cigarette and flicks the ash off onto his flinching father. Laufey cowers.

Loki feels that same odd calm drift through him. His heart is still. His hands steady.

He goes into the kitchen and digs around cupboards filled with cereal, canned soups, beans, flour, rice, oil, hostess cupcakes—all the things he never saw growing up. He wants to throw them to the floor but leaves them be. No one needs to know someone else was here.

Then Loki goes out to the back. It’s the same half-repaired shelves they’d used when he was a kid. The same barbeque sits dusty and out of use in the corner, covered in cobwebs. He scans the shelves and finds the canister of lighter fluid, hoping it still has something left.

It sloshes. He stands and takes another drag.

When Loki heads back in, Laufey is where he left him. He stands there and stares down at him.

“I can’t believe you used to scare me.”

Laufey stays silent.

Loki pours the fluid all over him, soaking the floor. Laufey twitches and jerks where he lies, crying out with every splash.

Loki takes another puff of his cigarette. It fizzles out and he lets it go, stubbing the remains in the ash tray that sits precarious on the edge of the couch arm.

Laufey whimpers and shields his face. He starts crying and Loki frowns.

He’s become a weak old man, he realizes. Loki’s hate fizzles out along with his cigarette.

“You’re not worth killing,” Loki says, finally.

Laufey only sobs louder.

Loki crouches beside him, the smell of the lighter fluid strong when he breathes in. Laufey isn’t looking at him.

“Look at me,” he demands, voice low.

Laufey’s milky eyes inch toward his.

“You hurt me,” Loki tells him. “I’m surprised you never hurt yourself. But you always were a coward.”

Another whimper as Loki leans forward, glaring down at him.

He reaches into his pocket and grabs his pack of cigarettes, his lighter.

Laufey squeezes his eyes shut, expecting the worst.

Loki throws them at his father’s chest. They fall to the floor.

“Guess you have to make a decision now. Whatever it is, I don’t care.”

Loki stands and leaves.

He leaves the door open.

He doesn’t look back.

\--

He gets a hotel a couple of towns over and only sees on the news what happened after he left.

“Good choice, dad,” Loki says to no one, and orders room service.

\--

Loki wakes up one night after dreaming he was still sleeping at bus stops.

He doesn’t go back to sleep. Instead, finds the nearest tattoo parlor and is the first person through the door when they open.

He gets a simple design on his wrist.

Better a snake than a coward.

\--

Loki is in a bar when he sees her. It’s dangerous because it’s in his hometown. And of course he’d see someone the second he went back.

Her hair is down, wavy and black like she wore it in high school. She wears heels that cut sores into her ankles and she’s wearing lipstick, which he has the knee-jerk reaction to tease her about.

Sif orders a cocktail and doesn’t see him.

She’s with a group. He doesn’t see Thor.

Loki isn’t sure why he thought he would.

\--

Loki goes back to the bar every so often. But he doesn’t see her again.

He buys a cheap laptop and spends his days figuring out where Frigga and Thor could be. Benefits of his training, he’s a decent hacker, though it’s tedious work he’s not overly fond of doing.

But it gets the job done.

He finds Frigga first.

She’s moved upstate, to the country. She still works. Her emails are split down the middle between cooking sites and Thor.

He stares at the name, the pages of emails sent between each other. He closes the browser, satisfied he’s found her address and leaves it alone.

Then he finds Thor.

\--

Loki sits on the address he’s found for a few weeks, unsure what to do with it. He could just pop over, and leave. Or he could break in and wait until Thor came home, finding Loki just _there_. He could do a lot of things.

Loki sits at the same bar for longer than he usually does, lost in his thoughts.

Then he sees her. Sif walks in with her hair pinned back. Behind her trails a group and he’s just letting himself take in who she’s with when he sees him. Thor.

Thor looks haggard. It’s the only word he can come up with.

Loki’s heart races and he snatches up his hood, pulls it tight over his face. He whirls around and leaves out the back.

He hopes Thor didn’t see him.

\--

He can’t wait any longer after that.

He takes a cab to Thor’s address. It’s smaller than the last house. Older.

Loki paces a few steps before the door and decides finally to sit. He fingers his pack of cigarettes in his pocket, feeling the carboard crease and bend. He should have gone back to the hotel and gotten his bag.

But the sun is setting. He smokes through two cigarettes before he forces himself to stop, swallowing down the smoky taste. He fidgets and decides it’s better to stand.

He sees Thor before long. Before he sees Loki. He pulls his eyepatch off and scratches at it. Loki’s heart twists at the sight.

Loki shoves his hands in his pockets and holds his breath.

His time’s finally up.


	6. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the hardest thing I've ever had to write.
> 
> This concludes the most important thing I've written! It's a story I love and I'm floored by how many others love it too. Thank you. <3

He listens as Loki speaks. As he details each moment Thor’s missed. It’s a gift. Thor knows it’s a gift, to be allowed to know. That Loki came back at all. To have Loki back here, with him. Close enough to reach out and touch, where for years before he’d drink when he had the urge to forget for a while. To forget the yearning that woke him in the middle of the night because in his dreams he had both eyes and his brother beside him. So he’d drink to pass out into a dreamless sleep.

Drink to flood out how it hurt to not know where Loki was, what he was doing, if he was even alive. No number to call—he knew because he’d tried calling, so many times. Each time it went to voicemail. Then one day there hadn’t even been that.

Thor waits, and waits. Loki is silent as he resettles against the counter, still bracketed by Thor’s arms. The twitch in his jaw tells Thor he’s nervous. The same is spelled out clear in the way his fingers go for the hem of Thor’s shirt, twirling and twisting the fabric, pulling at a frayed thread.

But his eyes are clear, hard in a way that’s almost challenging Thor, daring him to pick apart the last seven years of Loki’s life. Like it’s his to pick apart in the first place.

He’s missed so much.

Thor wants to tear through time, pull at the net of it and go back. Back to the night Loki left—not just him, but everything. Loki left Frigga, and Sif, and school, and a bed and three meals a day. He left everything behind and joined a fucking death march and Thor wants to scream at him, tell him how stupid he was.

But it was as painful for Loki as it was for Thor, and it’s a revelation that dawns on him only now—a confirmation of a shade of a thought he’d entertained over the years. Made him feel better on his worst days to think that Loki might be suffering as much as he was, all the time. An endless beast at his heels, always there, reminding him he didn’t do enough.

Now that Thor knows he was right he feels ill. He’ll never let Loki go again.

“Why didn’t you follow me? That night. Why didn’t you come after me?” Loki asks him and his voice is small.

Thor shakes his head, throat sour. “I wanted to. But if I’d chased you down, I knew you’d probably just try again. And you wouldn’t let me know when you did.”

The edge in Loki’s eyes softens at that. “You’re right.”

Thor swallows hard, wraps a hand around Loki’s wrist. He feels the tremble of his voice before he even opens his mouth.

“Why did you join the army? Sif said you…that you had a journal? I haven’t read it, she has it. But she said you wrote about it even before everything. Before the park. Before you started sleeping over.”

Loki shrugs as he flattens his hand over Thor’s side. “I wrote in a journal when I was bored. After I moved in with you, boredom wasn’t an issue since you were always wanting my attention. I started dedicating it to my, I don’t know. My secrets. There’s probably a lot of embarrassing entries about you.” He smiles and Thor can’t help but raise a hand to smooth over Loki’s jaw, his neck. Hold him close, and tight. Feel the beat of his pulse against his palm. “I’m sure I can get it back from Sif if you want to flip through it.”

“She offered, too.” Loki huffs. Then, “I never knew, Loki. You never told me.”

A quick smile appears before falling away as Loki takes a deep breath.

“It wasn’t something to tell. Growing up like I did, I was in my head a lot. Always thought the only out for me was the army or coast guard or something. Anything to get me away from that world. But I never considered what it would mean to actually do it until it was in my face. It was a joke that became real. A fantasy.”

Loki’s knee brushes his, stays there pressed to him.

“Why’d you tell Stark the boy survived?”

“I didn’t. I just said the tech saved his leg. It did.”

Thor stares at the jump in Loki’s jaw.

“I could have lost you, Loki,” he says, probably gripping the hair at Loki’s nape too hard. “You could have died, and I’d have never known.”

Loki goes still in his arms and for a moment he thinks he’s angered him. But all Loki says is, “I know. But I didn’t.” His fingers go to Thor’s chin, brushing over his beard to pull his gaze back up.

There’s pain in Loki’s eyes, and he hates it. Told himself that day in the park he’d never see Loki in pain again, not if he could help it.

“Thor, I’m not going away again. Not leaving you. I can’t,” he says. “I can’t do that again.”

Thor nods, over and over again, because it’s all he can do with Loki staring at him like he is. Like he’s Loki’s whole world. As much as Loki was—is his.

With a jolt, he remembers.

“You’re mine,” he breathes, eye socket throbbing. His good eye goes wet and he lets it, lets Loki see.

Loki is his. Was always his. Always will be. He’d been too close to forgetting.

Loki kisses him, a soft thing, shaky at the corners. Feels Loki tremble there against him and Thor starts to believe it’s not a dream after all. That it’s not temporary. That it’s real. That Loki is here to stay. A promise signed by the shuddery little _yes_ Loki lets slip free for him to hear.

“Did you find what you needed?” he asks and Loki pulls away slow.

Because that was the question. The question that’s dogged him for almost a decade.

When Loki looks at him then, Thor feels like hiding away. He doesn’t want to know the answer. Afraid of it, to know if Loki found something better than him. Something that gave him what Thor never could. A war, for one.

But Loki came back, he reminds himself. Loki is his. And Loki seems to agree.

He feels a dry ache in his throat, realizes he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since Loki’s been back in his life. He wants it to stay that way, so he ignores the intrusive thoughts. Tells them to go fuck themselves.

Loki’s mouth works. “In a way. There’s a lot I needed to move through. I still am.”

“I am too.”

He lowers his head and Thor can tell he wants to say more, ask his questions. Loki had smelled the alcohol on him that first night back. Knows it can’t stay buried forever. They’ll have to talk about it eventually.

“I missed too much,” he says, and the words sound caught. He can feel them breaking. “Too much, Loki.”

“I’m—” Loki begins, and stops, frowning. _Sorry_. It’s hanging there in the air between them. Sorry for seven years of loss. Sorry for seven years of loneliness. Sorry for seven of the worst years of their lives, for both of them.

It hangs there unsaid, but Thor nods anyway. Knows Loki can’t say it, shouldn’t say it. And neither should he. They know the weight of it, and it’s enough. Enough to know they’re together now.

“It’s just us, Loki,” Thor murmurs and Loki’s eyes shine. “It’s only us. What else do we need?”

Loki kisses him when he reaches up to wipe the tears from his good eye, bumping noses and shoving Thor’s hand out of the way. His thumb rubs a pattern under the patch Thor still wears, pushes it free to fall somewhere at their feet.

Thor gasps into his mouth, feels the breath shudder out of him. And Loki keeps kissing him through it, hands winding around his neck. He squeezes his eye shut, feels the steady always-there pulse at his temple go dim at the edges. Wraps Loki up in a hug and holds him. Counts every breath that leaves him.

Thor weeps and Loki holds him closer, lips gentle and warm at his cheek.

\--

Thor isn’t sure when, but Loki eventually coaxes him into taking a bath, draws the water hot enough to paint a red flush across his neck and chest as he lowers himself into the water at Loki’s command. He sinks up to his neck as Loki swirls around a dab of shampoo. An effort for a makeshift bubble bath. He soaps Thor’s hair twice just to try and help it along, rinses it when it doesn’t work.

“You’re not going to get bubbles out of that.”

Loki frowns as he swirls his hand through the water. “I can try. You need to relax more. I thought this might help.”

Thor sees the careful pinch between his brows. “I should be making you do this, not me.”

Loki shrugs. “Next time.”

The hand drifting through the water goes to rest on Thor’s thigh, a thumb smoothing over the hair again and again. Thor sees Loki’s focus shift to something else, something far away.

“There’s something I still don’t get.”

Loki blinks and comes back to himself, turning too-tired eyes on him. “What?”

“The way you spoke about Bucky. What did he do? Who was he? Why’d he let you go like he did?”

Loki’s lips purse before splitting into a heavy frown. He glowers at Thor and removes his hand to rest over the lip of the tub. Thor touches the elbow closest to him, needing to feel him still. Needing to let Loki know he was there.

“You’re getting the floor wet,” Loki tells him, arching a brow.

“Your shirt, too. But I don’t care.”

“Thor.”

“Tell me before I drag you in here with me.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Loki teases and Thor laughs, still a little watery. Sees Loki’s gaze sweep over his scarred flesh. “Bucky and Steve had a falling out at some point. Not sure when it happened, but it was early on in my deployment. Bucky in the states was not the same Bucky overseas. He had this dread over him, all the time. Didn’t smile anymore.”

“What were the black rooms?”

Loki hums. “They’d take people in and they wouldn’t come back out. Except for the handlers.”

“Bucky was a handler?”

“One of the best from my understanding. I never saw what he did. Never saw the rooms. I just know there were worse things than blood involved. I always thought Steve didn’t want to be involved.”

Thor squeezes the elbow in his hand, feels Loki start to pull away before stopping himself.

“I’ve thought a lot over the last few months why I was removed from his team. He needed killers. He thought I was heartless, because he knew what Steve had to do to get me approved in the first place.” Loki takes a slow breath. “It’s not like I didn’t think about it, when I needed to get back to the states. But I just didn’t. I didn’t kill my backup, someone else got him. I refused to act. Bucky didn’t like that in his soldiers.”

“It’s okay to not be a killer, Loki.”

Loki levels him with a flat look. “A little late for that.”

Thor tightens his hold, sits up and holds his stare. Recognizes the fear there he’d first seen when Loki had asked him for a favor one night in his room, so long ago. The fear of not knowing what sat inside him, what it meant, what it didn’t mean. All the million different little things Loki loved to pick apart inside himself, the things Thor wanted nothing more than to calm.

“That’s okay, too.”

Loki’s mouth drops open, enough that Thor can’t help the teasing smile that comes over him.

“You know that’s more than a little fucked up, right?” Loki finally says. His fingers find Thor’s, holding fast over his elbow, eyes a little too wide.

Thor leans forward, the water sloshing over the side onto Loki’s chest. He ignores it, or doesn’t realize, too focused as he is on Thor’s face.

“I meant what I said about before, about Laufey. But you left the decision to him. You made a choice, just like you made a choice in Mexico. Like the choice you made in a park seven years ago.”

“Eight,” Loki corrects him, quiet.

“Eight, yeah.” He tugs Loki closer, until his trembling hands go to his shoulders, fingers pressing in just shy of painful. “You chose to try and move on. You chose to move through it, rather than around it.”

Loki’s nails dig into his skin as he cups his face, feels the leap of his jaw.

“Clever way of praising me for not avoiding my problems.”

“It’s more than that. You’re choosing who you are, who you get to be. I’ve always admired that about you, Loki. Even before I really knew you.”

Loki nods. Does it again and stares down at the water. His hands go limp at Thor’s chest and slip away underneath, ghosting along the outside of Thor’s ribs as he hangs his head, breathes hard. Slow in, slow out, over and over again, for a long time.

Thor rubs his back through it.

\--

After, Loki braids Thor’s hair and steals his warmest shirt. It’s too large on him, too wide in the shoulders but he wears it through dinner anyway. Wears it when he takes Thor’s phone to put in his new number, and it has Thor close to crying again—he only doesn’t because he presses a kiss to Loki’s cheek instead. Wears it while they get in his truck to drive to Sif’s too.

“You’re sure she won’t mind such late notice?”

“I texted her when you were changing. She’s expecting us.” Thor quirks a brow. “I’m betting money she’ll punch you again.”

“With who? Yourself?”

“Yes. I made sure I had cash in my wallet and everything.”

“My jaw still hurts. Thanks.”

Thor looks over his shoulder to back out of his driveway.

“It was a pretty damn good hook, brother. You’d think with all those years in the army you’d have better reflexes.”

When he turns back, he catches Loki watching him.

Loki smiles then, soft and shy in a way Thor’s not seen.

When Thor grins back, Loki switches his gaze out the window.

\--

Sif’s house is the same as always. Half dead grass with a bush of thriving roses by the front door. She always told him how she was too lazy to water anything more than a foot out of reach on her way to work. Two old newspapers sit kicked to the side of the welcome mat that Thor knows is somewhere around five years old.

There’s the usual commotion after Thor knocks and Loki’s eyes go wide.

“Sif got a dog?”

“Big one, too,” Thor tells him. “You like dogs?”

Loki shrugs. “Never had one. I don’t know.”

The sound of the lock unlatching is loud despite Sif’s voice rising to shoo her dog from the door when she pulls it open. Her leg is out as she braces against a massive husky.

“This is Tyr,” she tells Loki, looking frazzled. “Ignore him and he’ll only want your attention more. Get in here already.”

Thor pushes past her with Loki close behind, looking pleased when Thor takes the brunt of it. He crouches and lays Tyr out flat, ruffling his thick fur.

Sif smiles at the sight before eyeing Loki.

“You’ve come to collect?”

“Your book is quite overdue, I’m afraid.”

Sif snorts and wastes no time in waving for him to follow her. Thor watches them go, sees the stutter Sif tries to hide in her steps. She’s nervous.

Loki sends him a sad smile before he turns the corner to her room, not missing it either.

Thor turns his attention back to the dog lying pliant and happy at his feet, tongue lolling. He squishes and pulls at his face, getting licked for his trouble. Tries to quiet his thoughts. Every question he hasn’t asked yet.

Thinks instead of the one time he’d caught Sif sobbing on Loki’s bedroom floor.

Sif needs this as much as he did.

\--

They’re talking for so long Thor has to go to the bathroom. The door to it is across from her bedroom, but he doesn’t want to interrupt so he keeps his head down, carefully avoiding drawing their attention. He shuts the door and runs the water, splashes some across his face.

He can just hear the mumble of their voices, and then a laugh. It makes him shut the tap off, feeling dazed. Like no time passed at all between school and this moment, with his brother and best friend in the next room laughing together over something secret. Like they always used to do.

\--

When he comes back out, he accidentally catches Sif’s eye. Loki is sitting on a chair, unaware of Thor a few feet behind him as he stares down into a worn little journal. The pages are lined in neat handwriting and Thor knows he’s reliving memories.

Sif stuffs her hands in her jean pockets, looks back at Loki. “Was it hard?”

“Afghanistan? Or coming home?”

Something flutters its way through Thor’s chest at the word _home_. He steps to the other wall, more out of Loki’s immediate line of sight and listens.

“Both.”

“The desert was fine. Boring except for bad days. I know I shouldn’t say that, but that’s the truth. Coming home was harder. Is hard.”

“It’s hard on you both.”

Loki sighs. “I was thinking earlier about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have come back at all. But I thought that about leaving in the first place, too.”

Sif’s eyes flick quickly to Thor’s. A knot forms hard in his gut, makes him feel faint.

“Why?”

Loki’s head tilts, dark hair falling loose over a shoulder. “Maybe I was selfish for coming back. Maybe it would have been easier for Thor if I’d just stayed where I was. I can tell it’s hard for him to look at me.”

“It would have been selfish of you to stay away, too,” Sif tells him. She steels her voice. “Easier on you not to face him again. Or me.” Loki hums and Thor sees Sif narrow her eyes. “He was drinking himself to death for a few years, you know.”

Loki hangs his head, sniffs.

“I got him to his meetings. I helped him when he was sick, or couldn’t get out of bed. I was the one to drag his ass back out into the world. Because the world needs good people like your brother. I need him.” Her voice wavers. “He smiled for the first _real_ time the day after you came back. I saw it and I realized everything was going to be okay again. Like life was finally back on its timeline, not paused like it’s been.”

There’s a pause and Thor sees Sif glare down at him.

“Fuck you, Loki.” Sif jabs a finger at him when Loki finally raises his head. “For a lot of fucking bad years. You having a hard time of it, then or now, isn’t an excuse for making the rest of us suffer with you.”

“Sif—”

“You’re really stupid if you think staying away would have been easier on Thor. Or me. Or your mother. Have you even seen Frigga, yet? Does she know you’re back?”

Loki sniffs again. Wipes at his eyes. “Not yet.”

“You need to do that.” Sif runs her hands through her hair, sucks in a breath. “You’re the dumbest person I’ve ever met, you know? You’re only smart when it suits you.”

“That’s probably accurate.”

Thor’s heart is racing.

Sif steps into his space, her hands going to Loki’s head, smoothing down his curls. Loki wraps an arm around her waist as she hugs him, his nose to her hip.

Thor drags his sight from where Loki clings up to Sif’s eyes. She’s hurting, like them.

Without looking away from Thor, she asks Loki, “You’re still in love with him?”

Thor has to stop his knees from going weak.

“There’ll never be anyone else,” Loki whispers. “I’m not leaving again. Not unless he asks me to.”

Sif lets him go.

“Good.” She collects herself, reaches down to tap his chin, guiding him up. “I’m glad you’re back, Loki.

She walks past Thor and Loki’s gaze follows after her, locking on him. He bites his lip and holds the journal up.

“Found it.”

\--

Thor tells Sif thank you on their way out the door. She hugs him tight, cheek warm against his.

“Go see Frigga this weekend. She needs to see him, too.”

“Just needed to figure out if he was here to stay or not, before.”

Sif squeezes him a final time before sending them off.

At the last second, she punches Loki on the arm as he heads out, looking incredulous to Thor.

Thor palms his wallet and waves it at him. “Now I get to take myself out for coffee.”

Loki grumbles as Sif closes the door.

The last thing Thor hears from her is, “Idiots.”

\--

Back home, Thor finds Loki shoving the journal into his hands. He licks his lips and pats the cover.

“I want to see her this weekend. We’ll drive out early.”

Then Loki nods and settles at one end of the couch, watching Thor. Waiting for what he’ll do.

Thor sits at his kitchen table and peels open the cover. Soft leather and still-pristine pages. Wrinkled but not torn or stained or illegible.

He starts to read.

\--

_The boy at the end of the street likes my nails. He’s the only one who doesn’t make fun of me for it. They keep chipping though, I don’t know how to stop that._

\--

_Mama caught me looking at the men with their camo uniforms outside of the grocery store. She pinched my arm to make me stop. It’s rude, she said._

_They seemed nice, though._

\--

_The boy who’s nice to me has nice hair, but it’s too long. It goes over the desk behind him, and the girl sitting there always has to brush it out of her way. Inconsiderate. I don’t want to say his name here, in case Laufey finds out._

_He always finds out._

\--

_Laufey hit me in the chest today. I hate him. ~~I hate him.~~ Thor saw me crying about it at school, since he’s always following me around. I said it was because I failed a test._ ~~~~

_Thor asked to help me with homework. I said no, I’m not stupid._

_I shouldn’t have said no._

\--

_Thor likes my name._

_I like Thor._

\--

_Thor asked me to sleep over this weekend. He said his mom is nice._

_Update: His mom is very nice. She made me cookies. No one’s ever made cookies for me before. Thor ate most of them, though._

_~~I didn’t want to go home. So~~ I convinced him to ask me over again in a few days. His mom seems fine with it._

\--

_I stole Laufey’s coke. I still have the bruises at my throat for it but the coke is good, so I don’t want to think about it. I’ll get it from one of the guys at school next week. Even if I have to fight him for it._

_I should just fucking sign up for the army or some shit, it’d be better, I wouldn’t have to be here, I wouldn’t ~~have to be afraid. I wouldn’t~~_

_I didn’t see Thor. I think he might be sick. It was a bad day._

_I need to get his number._

\--

_Thor caught me in the park today. I knew he was following me. I wanted him to see. I didn’t even snort any this time. I just wanted to see his face when he saw I had it._

_He’s hot when he’s mad._

\--

_I got my new ID in the mail today. If Frigga hadn’t taken me to get it, or let me change my name, I don’t think I would have agreed to the papers. I’m Thor’s legal sibling now, have been for a few weeks. That’s fucking weird._

_It still doesn’t have the right gender listed, but Frigga already made a doctor appointment._

_I don’t have to explain things to her. It’s like she just knows. Like she’s known for a long time._

_I really love Frigga._

\--

_I hid the tooth in my night stand. I don’t think anyone saw me grab it._

_Thor could have killed Brant today. I would have been okay with that._

\--

_Sif knows this, but I guess I’ll put it here too; Thor’s ass is going to be the death of me._

\--

Thor pauses in his reading to laugh. Loki bites at a nail where he still sits, watching him.

\--

_Sif thinks I’m playing with fire. She’s being ridiculous. I know how to lie, I’m very good at it. Thor has no idea about ~~my crush~~ ~~my feelings~~. About me._

_I mean, he knows about me. About that part of me. But he’s okay with it. More than okay. Normal about it. Like he knew, which I guess he did. But it’s still nice to know I don’t have to hide with him._

_I don’t know why I was worried._

\--

_Thor is too nice. Maybe I should have thought to ask him to take off his pants sooner. He did it like it was nothing._

_He has a pretty penis, too. I didn’t think they could be pretty._

_I want mine to be like his. Nice. Clean. Something to make his mouth water when he saw it. If he saw it. Like mine did when I saw his. If I do decide to get it, one day._

_I wonder how he feels about me._

\--

_I know I haven’t written anything in a while. It’s been good here. Good with Thor. Frigga didn’t question it when I asked for my journal, so that’s how I’m writing in you now. But the hospital pens are shitty._

_~~The park. The park was—~~ _

_I thought I was going to die finally. I thought it would be over. But it kept dragging out. Brant never was good at speeding things up. He didn’t even die fast. He bled out and I watched it happen. I can still smell it._

_But I thought Thor was dead. I thought he was dead. ~~His head was just a—~~_

_Thor was dying in my arms. He wasn’t breathing when the ambulance finally showed up. I saw him finally, a few hours ago. They haven’t let me out of bed yet, even though I’m fine. Thor lost his eye, was in surgery. I’ve been awake the whole time, even through the stitches. How is he any better off than me right now?_

_Thor didn’t see the blood under my nails when he came to see me. I don’t think he did._

_I don’t know what I would have done if he was dead when I found him. He was, for a few minutes. I couldn’t really tell._

_He couldn’t focus on me in my room earlier either. But he kept squinting like that would help. Even though he had to have been in pain._

_He’s too good for me._

\--

_Thor._

_I’m sorry._

\--

The journal ends on those two words, and it’s the apology he’d wanted seven years ago. Sitting here, in a book he didn’t want to steal away to read in secret. It’s better now, knowing what Loki’s been through. Now that he’s trying to understand it. Better knowing Loki knows he’s reading the thoughts he felt worth putting down, and Thor wonders at them all. Hundreds of entries, slowing to a few dozen before stopping entirely when he hit eighteen. The last date entered, his apology, was on his birthday.

Thor doesn’t realize he’s crying again until Loki’s hand is at his shoulder, sliding around to hug him from behind.

“I’m so tired of tears,” Thor rasps, laughing at himself. “I’m running dry.”

Loki smiles against his temple.

“You have to work double time now to make up for the other eye, after all,” he teases, and Thor is grateful for it.

“No more of this, Loki. No more. This,” he says, running a hand over the last page. “This can live in us. We have to move forward. We have to make a better life for us.”

Loki straightens up and grabs his journal. Takes it to the trash and lets it slip from his hand. The meaning isn’t lost on Thor, sitting there enraptured by the sight of his brother, the tattoo curling dark around his palm, green eyes shining in the low light.

Thor almost says it. The words he’s still holding back. He’s sure of them, always has been. But he doesn’t know what will happen if he says them so soon.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Loki tells him, and it’s a relief to not have to speak.

\--

“Do you still keep in touch with Rogers?” Thor asks him as he’s brushing his teeth that night.

“We usually talk every few months. Why?”

“I’d like to thank him for taking care of you when I couldn’t.”

Loki’s mouth works, can only nod a yes.

“I’ll tell him when he gets back,” he finally says. “You’d like him, I think.”

\--

The days pass easier than they have been. Slow, but peaceful in a way Thor hadn’t expected so soon after having Loki back in his life.

And Loki smiles more. Laughs too, which Thor can’t remember him doing often even before the park.

Thor calls Frigga that Friday and tells her he has a surprise. She sounds cautious but is excited at the suggestion of her son coming to stay for the weekend. He hasn’t done that in years. Hasn’t seen her for months besides.

He pulls Loki against him when he’s trying to make breakfast. Tells him what’s planned for that weekend and he grins, turning in Thor’s embrace to wind his arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” he hums.

\--

Saturday morning, Thor is packing up the truck. A cooler, Loki’s duffel and an overnight bag Thor’s had since he was fifteen are tossed into the back. Loki has been distracted all morning, and he figures it’s nerves before seeing Frigga again. Thor knows she’ll be nothing less than ecstatic.

“Can I ask about rehab?”

It comes out of the blue, Thor fishing his keys out of his pocket, Loki tapping his fingers across his knee. He’s looking at Thor, imploring, one brow pulled up.

“Sif found me passed out a few times, sick all over myself. Finally took me to a center where I could still go to work during the day. It helped, but not the first time.”

Loki nods, eyes flitting around his face.

“You know how she gets angry?”

“Yeah?”

“Instead, she got quiet. Didn’t say a word until she dropped me off. It was the worst I’ve ever seen her, she was so furious.”

“We don’t deserve her.”

“We really don’t.”

“Thor?”

Thor scratches a hand over his beard, waiting. He knows what’s next.

“I know you started because of me. But I saw the bottles in the trash last night. You think it’s smart quitting cold turkey?”

Thor smiles and Loki goes from worried to suspicious.

“Don’t laugh. It’s not funny.”

“Loki, I quit the night you came back. I just hadn’t gotten around to cleaning my place out yet. Haven’t wanted a sip since I saw you at my door.”

“Why?” Loki asks, clearly boggled.

Thor puts the key in the ignition and lets it sit there. “And I didn’t start because of you, not really. I never drank because I liked alcohol. It was something to do, sure. But it was something that helped me be tired enough to sleep. It went from there. I was trying to fill something that was gone, and I couldn’t process it, so I slept. There was work, but…I only wanted to sleep.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this before.”

“AA does that. But the point is that after you left, I couldn’t get through the night. That’s why I started. It helped me sleep and stay asleep.”

“And you quit, just like that?”

“I won’t lie. It was hard the first night you were back. I hardly slept. But I didn’t drink. After that, until now, I’ve slept like a baby. Me drinking, that’s on me, not you.”

“Thor,” Loki breathes.

“You asked me before if I wanted to move past it. I do, Loki,” he says, sincere. “I really do.”

Loki has to look away from him then.

“I want that too.”

\--

“And what about now?” Loki asks almost an hour into the drive.

They’re far enough out of the city that the hills have started. Long stretches of yellow grass and half-grown crops on five-acre farms. Thor isn’t sure what he means right away.

“Now that I’m here to stay?”

Thor passes two farms before he answers.

“It felt like waking up to cold water, seeing you at my door. A shock, but a good one. Yeah, it felt like waking up.”

\--

Thor pulls into Frigga’s home around the back because he doesn’t want her spying Loki in the passenger seat through her front windows. Her farm is overgrown, Thor needs to cut the grass back, but the fencing is good, the roof the same. He spies the small coop in the distance and smiles when he sees the same eight chickens roaming around.

Loki looks perplexed.

“I never imagined her taking up farming.”

“Hold on a minute,” Thor tells him, not wanting to remind Loki that things had changed after he left.

He jogs around to the front, counting the same round stones he’d lain down years before, when she’d first moved. Nerves make him restless, but he schools his features into something normal as he knocks. Grins honestly when he sees her finally. Frigga hugs him, kissing his cheeks before tugging gently at his beard.

“You need to cut that thing, it’s getting too long!” she complains, but smoothes her fingers over his jaw anyway. She’s practically beaming, so much so, Thor wonders how happy she’ll be when she sees her surprise.

“Mom, remember when I told you way back when it would be okay?”

He takes her hand and leads her on the path around her home. She hums, laughing lightly.

“Maybe. You say it a lot. What is it? Did you get me that pig I was telling you about?”

Thor hums, not trusting his voice. The sound of his truck door shutting draws their attention and he hears Frigga gasp beside him when it comes into view.

When she sees Loki standing there, Thor has to catch her from falling to the ground.

Loki runs to meet them.

\--

She doesn’t let Loki out of her arms until she’s well past crying, which is a long while. Thor leans against the side of the house, hears only the shapes of the words Frigga is mumbling into Loki’s hair. Loki rubs her back and Thor hears several apologies spill easy and free from his mouth.

Frigga needs those more than they do.

When Loki eventually nods to him, he returns it. Decides to bring in the stuff they brought for their stay.

\--

“You thought I was a pig?”

Frigga grins. “Thor’s been promising me a pig and pen for months. I’ve been waiting for him to set everything up. But I guess you’ll do.”

Thor hands them a glass of lemonade each, the chill stinging him. Frigga’s showed Loki her small home, spending hours walking around her small plot of land and talking. Now they’re sat, settled in for the night.

There’s a point Frigga just looks at Thor and he knows. Knows everything she’s feeling in that moment because it’s exactly how he felt when he saw Loki asleep on his couch the morning after coming back. Something that was gone finding him again, or the other way around. He’s not sure which just yet.

Frigga steals Loki well into the night, and Thor realizes he’s exhausted halfway through Loki’s recounting of his time away. He can’t remember the last time he felt well enough to go to sleep before anyone else did around him. Comforted by the simple fact his family was here, would be here when he got up.

He squeezes Frigga’s hand and doesn’t think about it before pressing a kiss to Loki’s cheek. Lingers a little too long. Wants Loki to know it’s going to be fine.

Loki slides a careful look from Thor to Frigga, who’s just smiling privately to herself.

Thor tells them goodnight.

\--

Loki wakes him when he slips under the covers at his back. His cold fingers find their way under the loose shirt Thor wears, raking shivers over his skin as he settles. When Thor mumbles a hello, Loki pinches a nipple in reply, before flattening his hand to rest over Thor’s heart. Thor can feel the warm press of Loki’s breasts at his back, the inhale-exhale of his stomach, the beat of his heart, a rhythmic beat to lull him back to his dreams.

Thor has never felt so safe.

\--

Thor enlists Loki’s help to build a fence the next day. Orders him to hold wood as he measures and saws, as he drills and pounds them into the ground. Loki obeys dutifully, strangely quiet throughout long hours of hard work.

Then it’s time for dinner and before Thor knows it, they’re kissing their mother goodbye to head back.

“Please come next weekend. Take Monday off, too.”

Thor nods, already planning on it. “Maybe I’ll bring that pig.”

Frigga beams up at him. “Did I ever tell you I raised you right?”

Loki is awkward in their farewell. But he promises to help her bake next time. They watch him take his duffel to the truck.

“Thor?” Frigga asks. “Take care of each other.”

Thor nods. “We will.”

\--

Loki is quiet through the ride back too, and Thor wonders what’s on his mind. If something happened. His thoughts meander the longer the silence drags. Had Loki thought of something? Had he started to question his decision again? Was he regretting it already?

Loki just stares out into the endless grass, not another car on the road to speak of.

Thor’s knuckles go white where he grips the steering wheel, feeling sick and lightheaded. Maybe he was wrong to let Frigga know Loki was back yet. He should have waited a month. Made sure it was for real. That it would stick. Loki was probably wondering the same thing—

“Pull over,” Loki gasps, already grabbing the handle. The door is half open before Thor’s stopped the car.

Loki falls out of his seat, doubled over and heaving onto the pavement. Thor rushes to unbuckle himself and run to Loki’s side.

Loki doesn’t shove him away when he places a steady hand at his shoulders, which he counts as a good sign.

He bends low, low enough to see Loki’s face and his eyes are wide, wet, spit at the edge of his mouth. Another wave hits his frame and Thor watches as bile runs fresh out of him. Loki groans, long and low.

“Thor,” he moans. “It’s real. It’s fucking real.”

It’s an echo of Thor’s earlier thoughts and he goes still, feeling cold prick up along his spine.

“I messed up,” Loki gasps. “I almost ruined everything. I didn’t know. Thor, I didn’t know.”

He heaves again and Thor holds him through it. Calming down, he swipes Loki’s hair back from his face, accepts the weight that Loki leans into him.

“No one knew, Loki.”

Loki spits, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and pushes himself upright. Pulls Thor with him to standing, gripping his shoulders, his face.

“I shouldn’t have gone away. I had to. I did, but I shouldn’t have.”

“Loki, you’re having a panic attack—”

Loki shakes his head, and Thor sees the wildness in his eyes.

“You’re mine, too. You’re mine, Thor. I shouldn’t have risked that.” And he kisses Thor so hard it hurts, their teeth bumping. Thor walks him back, hits the rotting wood fence left half standing in the grass, and Loki keeps kissing him. He tastes like sick but he doesn’t care. They need this.

“Loki!” Thor finally manages to draw away, hand firm at the spread of Loki’s neck. His pulse is rocketing out of his chest. Loki opens his mouth to start again but Thor beats him to it.

“I love you.”

Loki shuts his mouth. Takes a breath.

Thor shakes him enough to make him let the words sink in. Let Loki know he’s telling the truth.

“I haven’t said it yet. Not since you’ve been back. I should have told you the moment I saw you.”

“I knew that, already,” Loki whispers but Thor can tell he didn’t. Not really.

He’d left Loki wondering.

“Sometimes you still have to say it,” Thor tells him. “You needed to hear it.”

Loki licks his lips and Thor spies the twitch in his lips. Loki’s eyes are bright, and everything Thor’s ever wanted to do, ever wanted to say threatens to pour over the careful surface he’s built up over the last seven years. He knows everything will be different now. But better too. Everything he’s ever wanted, starting with Loki here, in his arms at the side of an old road in the middle of the country.

Loki’s eyes reflect the light of the setting sun as he blinks, brows pulled together in that fragile way he always had about him.

“What do we do now, brother?”

Thor smiles, the word spreading warm through him. Holds Loki close on the side of the empty road. In this light, he sees the old scar running along Loki’s neck and he stares at it. Knows he’ll never let Loki worry about terrible things again.

“I don’t know. But tomorrow is Monday. We can start there.”


End file.
